Jamie Chadwick
by PurpleFuzzyDragon
Summary: Jamie has never known life outside of Alden Manor until she receives her letter to Hogwarts. Taking place nearly a century after Harry Potter's adventures, Jamie soon discovers that some things are greatly amiss in the world around her and the adventure is just beginning.
1. The Letter

Chapter 1- The Letter

Jamie looked at her hands. They were smeared with dirt from scrubbing the basement floor, as ordered, which hadn't been cleaned for over a decade. After dunking them gingerly in her pale of soapy water, Jamie observed the callused skin under the dim light of the basement bulbs. She picked a large splinter out of her skin without wincing and returned to work. They needed a new brush, but Madam Alden didn't seem to think that getting Jamie a new scrub brush, on top of everything else, was top priority. She sighed as she threw the deteriorating brush into the bucket of suds and hurried outside to watch the sun rise.

She yawned as colors streaked the sky. A brilliant orange popped from the east as if it had been smoothed out by a butter knife into the horizon. Jamie stared back at the mansion. She had lived here her entire life, her chores, changing with the times. She had no memory of her father and her mother had escaped some years ago, leaving her three older brothers and herself behind. She had been nine at the time. She quickly reminded herself that her mother had not escaped as her brother, Ben, always told her, but had gone mad and left when not in her right mind. The last time she mentioned the word "escape," she had been scolded by Madam Cox. As the lady had duly reminded her, it was a privilege to live on the manor where she was given food, clothing, and shelter each day. The least Jamie could do each day was work for all she was given.

Still, no matter how much Jamie was told not to think about her mother, her thoughts would often drift to the only conversation she clearly remembered which had been just days before her mother's departure. She had learned how to cook a chicken. Of course, she had eaten an animal before, but the experience made her wonder what happened to the animals. They were living just like her, right?

_"__Mama," she asked, "What happens to the animals we eat?"_

_"__What do you mean?" Mama asked, looking up from her sewing._

_"__What happens to animals? Where do they _go_?"_

_Her mama sighed. "When we take what we need from them, like meat for food, and everything that's left becomes part of the soil. Their bodies help keep it fresh and new."_

_"__What about us? Are we eaten and used for crops when _we_ die?" She couldn't imagine eating Barbara Harken, the old woman who had died just a few months ago._

_"__Certainly not. We don't eat our own kind." Jamie let out a breath of relief. She didn't want to be eaten when she died._

_"__Then, what's gonna happen when I die?"_

_"__Well, we'll dig a hole, deep in the ground, and lay you down there. You'll be covered in nice fabric, not your old burlap rags, and we'll put you with the things you like, like cinnamon or a doll you favor." Jamie only had one doll she had once gotten for Christmas and it was deteriorating quickly, certainly not something she wanted to be buried with. "We'll gather around you and say how much we all loved you." Jamie wondered who the "we" was. The only person who had ever told her that she loved her was her mother. Then again, Jamie wasn't completely sure what love was. She loved eating peas from the vegetable garden when no one was around and watching the dew roll off leaves early in the morning, but somehow it didn't seem like the same thing as a two people loving each other._

_Her mother finished, "Lastly, we'll cover you in soil and plant a tree right above you." Jamie nodded and walked away, returning to her chores. It sounded lovely. She wasn't sure about nice fabric or being buried with something she liked. What good would that do once she was dead? Jamie liked the idea of a tree being planted above her. It was like sprouting life from death. She would be like a seed in the ground. A little entity that helped her tree to grow. When it got older, after decades of standing patiently in one spot, watching critters pass by and the seasons change, people would climb it, or use it to shade them from the hot sun. Maybe lovers would sit by the trunk, sharing stories and holding hands under the study leaves. Jamie wasn't quite sure why people did this, but she had seen older folk under the canopy of a willow a few times by the pond when she was sent to the market. It must've been enjoyable, otherwise, why would they bother?_

Jamie cleared her head of the memory, still engraved in her mind from two years ago, as a familiar mail boy ground into the dirt with his shoes, skidding several feet from his destination. She giggled, "Good morning, Gregory. Still haven't fixed your brakes, I see."

"Morning Jamie," he said, backing up on his bike. "Here you are." Gregory handed her a rubber-banded wad of letters.

"Thanks," she smiled, looking down at the mail. After a moment, she noticed that there was no familiar hustle of sound to leave. She looked up at him. He was staring at her with hungry eyes, but quickly started down the road on his bike once she noticed his interest. Gregory was over two years older than her. Why was he staring at her like that? Then, it hit her. The veela enchantment must be kicking in! Jamie didn't know much about the veela enchantment, just that every baby girl born on Alden Manor received it and it could never be taken away. Ben had explained that it was a habitual and heinous way to make her look pretty, so the corrupt "dogs" of the Alden family could obtain money by bastardizing decent citizens like the destructive, vile, and nefarious beings they were. Jamie thought that it was an awfully rude way of putting it, but she got the point. For some reason, the Alden family wanted her to look pretty as she got older.

Walking in toward the house, Jamie untied the bundle of letters and shifted through the bills until she found one that made her pause along the walk. Never had this ever happened. How _could_ it? No one outside the manor, aside from Gregory, some village children, and a few of the shop owners, knew of her existence. Still, there it was. It read:

Miss J. Chadwick

The top bunk of Shack Number Two

67 Cadburrow Lane

Bradmore

She stared at the letter for a moment, not understanding entirely. Not even everyone on Alden Manor knew she slept on the top bunk in her shack. Had Nathan sent her this as a joke? Being the youngest and least matured of her three older brothers, he often played pranks on Jamie. He was the same age as Gregory and quickly maturing physically while keeping his boyish mind set which worried Jamie.

She began walking into the mansion, reminding herself to scold Nathan later for stealing paper to make such a foolish document. It was silly, she had to admit. She might have even laughed were it not for the trouble her brother would get in should anyone have found out he stole parchment from the Aldens. Quickly, she stuffed the letter in her burlap rags and entered the kitchen.

She held her breath, watching Madam Alden sip her coffee. The older woman looked to her, Jamie set the letters on the table, and curtsied as she was taught by Madam Cox. "Good morning, Madam Alden. May I make you any eggs?"

The brunette scoffed, "And have you burn them again? Feed that trash to people who don't mind eating it. I have had my breakfast. Run along." Jamie nodded and hurried out, into the garden. She did not like Madam Alden, but luckily, she only had to sped mornings with her. It was a rare occasion that the madam would let her get an early start on her chores.

Sometimes, she would spend the morning searching for small holes in the ground she had discovered long ago. It seemed as if an entire race of beings had once lived deep beneath the flowers and vegetables, carving out intricate tunnels and caverns that lay deep beneath the ground, but, for some reason, they had been abandoned. Today, Jamie crossed the yard to shack number two and burst inside, requesting Nathan.

"He's in the back, why?" her oldest brother, Tony asked.

"He stole paper!"

"Now, Jamie, I know he likes to play, but I don't think he would take it that far. He could get into serious trouble for that."

"Like they don't have plenty of parchment," Ben sneered from outside. "Why have they got to punish us for taking a little?" The two rolled their eyes.

"What did he do?" Tony asked.

"He sent me a letter," she responded, handing it to him.

"That certainly is a bizarre prank," he mused, "but I don't see anyone else doing it, sadly. I'll talk to Nathan."

"Talk to me about what?" Nathan entered, his blonde hair, greasy and out of place.

"Nathan, you stole paper!" Jamie accused.

"I did not!" She tore the letter from Tony's hands and held it clear for him to see. "I didn't write that, although, it's kind of a good idea. I'm a little upset someone beat me to the punch." Jamie looked at the letter, perplexed. She had experience with getting the truth from Nathan. It wasn't hard. Usually, he'd burst into a frenzy of laughing and get reprimanded in the first few seconds. He genuinely didn't appear to have any idea as to what the letter was. She made a decision. Jamie took the glued flap of the letter and tore it open.

"Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry," she read aloud. The room was silent and Ben poked his head into the small shack. The four looked at each other seriously. They had all heard of Hogwarts, but they were the only people on the manor who knew of it as far as they were concerned. Their mother used to tell them stories about a magical place where young witches and wizards learned spells and made potions and read from newspapers where the pictures waved back at you. They were bedtime stories that they had all remembered well from when their mother was around.

Ben hurried into the room and closed the door behind him. "None of you sent that?" he asked. They each took a turn shaking their heads.

Nathan swallowed. "You don't think it was…it was mom, do you?" No one spoke. They didn't know what to think.

Jamie continued to read. "Headmaster: Richard Darby, Order of Merlin, Second Class, International Confederation of Wizards." She paused, gazing at the letter as if it had turned into a fish. It all sounded like a load of nonsense, but she kept reading. "Dear Miss Chadwick, We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment. We await your owl by no later than July 31. Yours sincerely, Chase Douglas, Deputy Headmaster." As she read the letter, excitement built inside her. She wasn't sure what this was. Maybe a letter from her crazed mother? It had to be. She knew that the letter confirmed her mother's state of mind, but just hearing from her was a blessing. It didn't matter how insane she was. This meant she was still out there!

"I could very well be our mother," Tony agreed, "but we shouldn't jump to conclusions."

"Then, what?" Ben laughed. "You think a school of magic sent Jamie a letter so she could pack her bags and head off to learn spells? Anthony, we're the only ones who know about Hogwarts."

"I didn't tell anyone," Nathan added.

"Let's think logically, if our mother did send us this, what could it possibly mean? We need some time to deliberate."

"There a list of supplies," Jamie said absently. Whoever had written this letter had certainly taken their time and known all about Hogwarts. It sounded so nice to go to an actual school. Jamie had been home-schooled her entire life. She barely left the manor. The only time she ever got to play with children her age was when she went to the market. She would get punished if anyone found out she had been lollygagging instead of going straight home from her food shopping. Imagining being in a school full of children every day made her heart swell. She wanted to learn with people at her side instead of being in a bare room with Madam Cox.

"Say," Nathan started, trying to sound hypothetical, "if there were a Hogwarts, wouldn't a representative give her the letter? I mean, seeing as she's not part of a magical family and all. That's what mom said happens once. A person comes and explains it to your parents."

The three stared at him for a moment. Tony shrugged, "That's only if you're muggle born. If you're from a family where one parent is magical, the school might assume you already know the drill."

Nathan nodded. "So, say Dad was a wizard…"

"Are you seriously considering this is real?" Ben asked, aghast.

Jamie was surprised to hear herself ignoring Ben and answering Nathan. She was just as excited as he was. "If Dad were a wizard, that would make us wizards!"

"Unless one of us was a squib," he pointed out.

"Guys! You can't be serious!" Ben said, astounded.

"Squibs are rare," Tony reminded them. "Unless all three of us are squibs, we should have gotten letters years ago."

Nathan deflated like a bike tire. "Oh," he remembered.

Jamie looked desperately amongst her brothers. She did not want to lose this flow of conversation so quickly. She wanted to go to school! "But, I wasn't monitoring the mail, then, I was too little," she jumped in. "Remember, Madam Alden used to get it herself each morning until she wanted to give me a job to do this year. She could have just thrown the others away, unaware of what they were."

"That wretch!" Ben shouted, suddenly considering that Hogwarts might be a real place if it gave him another reason to hate the Aldens. "How dare she toss _our_ mail!"

"Perhaps we should ask her if she's ever seen mail for us before," Jamie suggested.

"No!" Ben spat frantically, slightly scaring Jamie. "If we ask her about those letters, she'll get suspicious and figure out you've got one!"

"You think she knows about Hogwarts and is throwing out our mail just to get us to stay here?"

"Yes! Jamie, our complete purpose here is, so we can be primped and prepared for when, one day, we become the Aldens' cronies. Imagine us going away to a school of magic and becoming powerful enough to go our own way in life. All that hard work, down the drain!" Ben started pacing, looking a little too much like a painter who had drunk too much absinth. "Think about it. We were all told that Jamie got that veela enchantment put on her when she was a baby and Mom always used to talk about a class in Hogwarts called Charms where you learned stuff like that, remember? We've all been brainwashed into thinking that this is some normal thing that all girl babies get, like a shot, but what if it's not? I was talking to a guy in a village about it once and he looked at me like I was crazy! I didn't understand it at the time, but now I get that not everyone knows about the veela enchantment, just those at the manor."

Hearing Ben talk, Jamie thought that even if he hadn't mentioned the veela charm to her on the street, she would think he was crazy, but she didn't say so. His ideas sounded like they were right on the money.

Tony listened intently to Ben. "You know, for the first time ever, Ben, I think one of your conspiracy tales might be true."

"If it is true, we've been robbed," Nathan whined. "A school of magic sounds so far out!"

"I'm going," Jamie alleged. The group of three looked at her.

"Sis," Nathan said, "you know, it all sounds cool, but we don't actually know if it's true. Besides, Mom said that kids need to travel to London. Even if you did manage to get there, where are you going to find all the wizarding money necessary to buy all of your supplies?"

Jamie was hardly listening. She was trying to remember how to get to Diagon Alley from the Leaky Cauldron. Her mother had told her a time or two, but it hadn't completely sunk in. "Where there's a will, there's a way," she said, determined. Her brothers exchanged a worried glance.


	2. Gregory's Trip

**AN: Ladie's name is pronounced [law-dee].**

**Just clearing that up.**

Chapter 2 – Gregory's Trip

"Oh! You are so adorable!" Ladie cooed when Jamie asked her about Cinderella's fairy god mother. Ladie often called her adorable and Jamie had yet to decide if that was something she liked.

"But, Ladie, remember how you told me about Cinderella?" Ladie nodded. "You said that her fairy god mother came and used a magic wand to turn a pumpkin into a carriage and her rags into a ball gown and…um…"

"...the mice into horses," Ladie finished for her. "Yes, I remember the story. What about the fairy god mother?"

"I was wondering if she could be real."

Ladie giggled "You are so cute! No, sweetie. Cinderella is a fairy tale. Everything in it is made up." She took a decorative clip out of her hair and shook it down, so she could brush her long blonde locks. Jamie always loved Ladie's hair. Girls at the manor weren't allowed to grow their hair out until they turned fifteen and Jamie longed for the day she could swirl her hair into a bun or braid it against her head or clip it into a high ponytail. For another four years, she would have to keep it in a bowl cut.

Jamie was slightly disappointed. She'd hoped Ladie knew more about witches and wizards than she did. "So, there are no witches or wizards in the world?" she revealed desperately.

Ladie paused for a second. "No," she said oddly.

Jamie sighed, conceding. "So, where have you been?"

"Oh, you know, business." In fact, Jamie didn't know. Ladie would disappear for days, even weeks, at a time, and return without a word, sometimes mangled and exhausted. Whenever Jamie pressed her to elaborate, she'd always just say "business" as if that in itself were a full explanation. Jaime clearly remembered that after her mother left, Ladie was gone for an entire month. She was sure that Ladie and her mother simultaneously vanishing was no coincidence, but Ladie would always change the subject quickly whenever Jamie confronted her about it.

Ladie was ten years older than Jamie almost to the day. They celebrated their birthdays together. Jamie remembered when Ladie stayed on the manor constantly, doing chores and being schooled by Lady Cox, then, just four years ago, she suddenly was moved from a shack to a small room in the mansion and Jamie hardly ever saw her. Sometimes, Jamie would be cleaning the rooms in the middle of the day to find Ladie asleep in her bed, muttering about extinct giants and werewolves. Jamie had never heard of these things before, but she figured they must've been big wolves that Ladie had seen once that scared her. Everyone she asked on the manor what "extinct" meant told her to stop making up words.

Nothing was definite when it came to Ladie. The only thing that Jamie knew for sure was that she was beautiful. The veela enchantment had taken effect when she was Jamie's age and, as a result, she looked pretty no matter what state she was in. Sometimes Jamie wondered if the enchantment altered her physical appearance, so what people saw wasn't really her, but just an illusion. Jamie often wondered what people saw when they looked at her. She secretly wished that there was some way to see what she looked like clearly. Whenever she tried to see herself in water, her face was darker than the rest of her head and she couldn't make out her features. Nathan thought that was a foolish thing to want. "What does it matter how you look? It's not like it makes a difference either way!" Jamie knew he was right, but couldn't stop herself from wondering what Gregory saw when her stared at her three days ago when she discovered her Hogwarts letter.

Her Hogwarts letter…She hadn't been able to stop thinking about it ever since the discussion she'd had with her brothers. She couldn't get the thought of leaving the manor out of her mind, but there was that old tale that Ben told her about when he was angry sometimes. He always said he would get up and leave the place if there wasn't an enchantment placed on them at birth to prevent them from leaving the village before 17. She never did find out what it did.

It had been discussed at supper each day, but the group of four always came up blank on the answer to their questions. Was the letter real? Was there actually a school named Hogwarts that taught young witches and wizards how to reach their full potential? Last night, Tony had silenced the table by saying that there was no use talking about it since the group had no owl to send back to Hogwarts by the 31st. Even if there were a school, they had no way of contacting Chase Douglas, the man who had sent the letter, to tell him that Jamie would gladly attend Hogwarts. There was simply no way they could contact the school. Jamie nearly cried. He was right. Her dreams of going to school with children all around her were crushed because she had no owl.

* * *

Jamie stood at the gate, waiting for Gregory to come down the road. The previous day, when Jamie was cleaning out the basement, she found a thick, circular pair of corrective lenses on the floor. Jamie knew it was wrong to steal, but she thought it was okay because no one had paid attention to these in a long time. She thought they would be a good birthday gift for Nathan since he had always had trouble with his sight, but Tony informed her that lenses had to be specific to the person otherwise they could damage your eyes. Disappointed, she asked how they looked on her since she, obviously, had no way of knowing herself. Tony laughed, saying her eyes looked about twice as large and all the looks she'd received from her veela enchantment had been taken away. Jamie found this useful. Maybe if she wore them to the mail pickup, Gregory would no longer gawk at her. She was wrong.

Gregory pulled to a stop. "You wear glasses?"

"Er…I'm trying them out." Which was technically true. He stared at her, but not in the same way he had days before. His eyes were slightly wider than normal and he didn't seem to mind her looking back at him.

"They're…big," he resolved, handing her the paper.

"Yes," she agreed. "What's happening in your neck of the woods recently?"

"Oh," he said, shaking off his trance. "Guess what?!"

Jamie stood there, gazing at the fuzzy figure. "Um…you fixed your breaks?"

He paused. "Well, yeah, but that's not what I mean. I'm going to visit my uncle! I haven't seen him since I was seven."

"Congratulations!" Jamie was secretly envious. She'd never left Bradmore in her entire life. She wished that she could go with him. "Where does he live?"

"London!" Jamie froze. London? Like, King's Cross, Leaky Cauldron, London?

"London…" she whispered. Irritated from the glasses, she removed them and looked him in the eye. "When?"

"Two weeks from now, on Tuesday. I can't wait!"

Jamie smiled. Neither could she.

* * *

Jamie breathed the cold morning air. Bouncing against her leg was bag filled with garden greens, a sewing needle, her burlap rags, her glasses, and all the money she'd collected over the years. Jamie had always collected money from around the mansion to spend on candy. She'd worked on a clever little scheme where she'd sneak change from market purchases and give the remainder to the madam. Madam Alden never seemed to pay attention and she would never be caught as long as she kept the secret wholeheartedly to herself. She hadn't even told any of her brothers about her scheme. She had what she thought was a decent amount of money from storing it in the knothole over the years. She had saved a lot, only sparing it on candy once a year in case she saw something in a village store that sparked her fancy. Nothing ever did and she was glad, considering if it had she wouldn't have money for her trip.

Jamie interrupted her walking session when a glint of light peeked over the horizon. The first rays of morning were Jamie's favorite part of the day. It seemed the most pure setting the sun had, just like all beings. When you woke, it was like you had a split second of peace where you had no idea of the trouble life was dishing out to you. The sun waking up seemed a prolonged version. It didn't have to rush each morning to get chores done. It took its time.

Jamie skipped on the gravel at the road's edge, nearing Gregory's house with every shuffle. She had a tune she'd created as a work song. It was rare that Jamie ever heard music, so she didn't know the words to any songs. One day, the song just came to her as a reminder of the conversation she'd had with her mother before she'd left Jamie.

She sang in the orange glow of morning:

When I die a tree will be erected

Right above where I lie, so I'll always be protected

By the roots that surround me like a coffin made of plant

By the darkness that's around me, turning harsh rain to decant.

Finally, she stopped in front of a tiny, white, one floor home. She eyed the beaten, maroon car. It was time to put her tiny figure to the test. Jamie opened the left back door, remembering how Gregory had once told her the lock had broken some years ago, and climbed into the old, cramped car, shutting the door behind her. Jamie yanked back the cushion to the center seat and found a small section right before the trunk where the spare tire was stored. Would she fit? Hopefully, Gregory's father did not take out the spare tire when packing the luggage into the trunk. If he did, she'd have a lot of explaining to do. She threw her bag into the space, slid in, and spent over five minutes trying to pull the middle seat's cushion back into place. Finally, she was in. She was in the most squished, uncomfortable place she thought existed, but she was in.

With no way of telling time, Jamie lay on the car's board-like surface, her arm rubbing against the spare tire and her eyes drooping. When she woke, she hadn't even realized she'd fallen asleep. Below her was the unmistakable hum of the engine. It was soothing, like a jostled heartbeat. She could've gone back to sleep, but she heard a man's deep, groggy voice announce, "Halfway there, kids." How had she not awakened when the car first started and everyone was getting in? It was peculiar to her. Perhaps she was a heavy sleeper and just hadn't realized it. Anyway, she was too excited to go back into her dream state, now. She was halfway to London! For two weeks she had been sneaking information from Gregory, pretending to be extremely interested in his trip to see his uncle. She found that if she didn't wear her glasses, he'd answer any question she threw at him. Boy, did that veela enchantment come in handy! The only thing she did not manage to get from him was when he'd be retuning. No matter how much she pried, he remained extremely vague saying, "Well, I'll be there for a while." It was annoying, but she'd figure it out later. If Diagon Alley really did exist, she wouldn't need to return in the car with Gregory and his family!

Jamie was scared when she thought of the punishment awaiting her at Alden Manor if she was wrong. If she was right…What would she do over the summer if she was right? Would she return to her brothers and Ladie and Madam Cox and Madam Alden and everyone else at Alden Manor? Would they let her show her face there again? She decided not to think about it.

By now, Madam Cox should've discovered the note Jamie left on the stove saying that they were fresh out of carrots (which was technically true considering she'd taken them all in her bag) and she'd gone to get more at the market. The market was twice as far as Gregory's house, so Jamie wouldn't be back till noon at least and, by the time they'd figured out something wasn't quite right, Jamie would be long gone.


	3. The Sleep Collector

**AN: I know, the beginning is little slow, but that's just to give you a sense of Jamie's life on the manor and foreshadow bunch. It'll pick up once Jamie gets to Hogwarts.**

Chapter 3- The Sleep Collector

The more hours that passed in the shuttering automobile, the more Jamie didn't mind all she'd left behind. She'd never been on an adventure before and she hoped that this would be the first of many. Jamie didn't mind wasting hours on end in the car. She was patient from spending every morning with Madam Alden and sitting through Madam Cox's teaching during the year. The only thing she found irritating was her position. She would surely be sore when she got out and was developing brush burns as she lay there.

Jamie was hungry, but her pack lay at her feet and she hardly had room to grab anything from it. Besides, the noise of her chewing would probably drive suspicion of her presence. Jamie ignored her stomach's pleas for food. She had learned how to do this over the years because it seemed a daily process. Eat breakfast at four, get hungry at nine, neglect growls from her body, pulling energy from deep within her core through day, eat supper at six, and repeat. That was the way it was for everyone, except Jamie would often give some of her food to Nathan because she had heard once from Mama that boys needed more food to help them grow. She no longer stole from the kitchens after receiving a severe punishment for Madam Cox which made Ben angrier than ever, ranting all night about lack of justice.

Madam Cox meant what was best. Why couldn't Ben see that? It had been her folly, stealing food and she deserved due punishment. Madam Cox did, after all, teach her everything she knew about plants, animals, rocks, math, the stars, and the outside world. Their current prime minister was Andrew Hopson, they had been at war for two years, and cars were clunkers of transportation, now very popular in the UK. She knew more, but if she had to sum up her schooling, that was what she learned.

Jamie never had much fun during the school year. She wasn't allowed to travel to the market because of her schooling and never saw Gregory because of his. During the school year, Dr. Hestler, who was in his early eighties, trudged along the road to meet Jamie and would usually not reach the gates until six or seven o'clock while Gregory would speed down the road on his bike at five a.m. and stop to talk to her. School started too early for Gregory to do his paper route during the year, so she only ever saw him in summer when Dr. Hestler visited his Niece and Nephew, having no children of his own. Jamie sighed, remembering how she would not see Gregory until next summer, maybe not even. If Master Alden, Madam Alden's spouse, didn't let her back on the manor, it was possible she would never see him again!

Jamie readjusted her arms around the inside metal of the tire. It would've been so much better if she was able to see the sun. Then, she would've known the time. Another thing that worried Jamie was that she had never seen a map of the United Kingdom before. How many kilometers away was London from Bradmore? It could take days to get there!

Just as she was thinking this, though, the car came to a halt. Another gas stop? Something told Jamie that this wasn't right. The voices in front of her were muffled, but she thought that she made out the word "parking." The seat in front of her shifted and there was a commotion in front. What was going on? Suddenly, she felt a cool breeze on her legs and prayed for no one to see them when they unpacked the trunks from the car. The car bounced and jostled. She thought she felt the automobile tilt slightly as if someone were leaning on one side. Jamie knew that Gregory had one seventeen-year-old sister and one a year younger than herself. Both of his parents were alive, so the entire family fit snugly in the car. She noticed that once they were all out, the cushions in front of her were much more relaxed.

When Jamie heard no sound or commotion from outside, she waited for what she thought was around an hour, occasionally, she'd press her ear against the top of the trunk, but decided against leaving in case someone forgot something and she was caught. Eventually, though, she decided she had waited long enough and should try for departure. Knocking the seat out of place, she gingerly eased herself out of the trunk area, into the pitch black. She had, at least, expected a sunset, but maybe she missed it when she was waiting. She pouted. Maybe the sunset was a bit much to ask for a girl in her situation, but she still thought she deserved one. Then again, she thought, the sunset was always like a reward at the end of a long day's work: a little token to say "job well done." The more she viewed it; the more it made sense that she had missed it. She had done no work today.

Jamie shoved the door open and winced at a kink in her neck. Her burlap rags made sure that she was bruised in every part of her body they covered, but Jamie had been in worse pain before, so she paid it little mind. All that mattered was that she could walk. Jamie almost forgot her bag which would have paved a road of trouble for her indeed. Where would she get food without it? Jamie had a troublesome time yanking the bulky pack from the space she had stayed in. It seemed as if it had swelled over the hours.

With the pack at her side, Jamie set off in the night. She would find a park and sleep there until morning. She only worried about exposure to the cold. She'd gotten used to the prickling sensation of her limbs freezing up during the night and waking up shivering, but the shack did provide some heat, especially with the multiple bodies resting in a small area. Jamie bumped a few more automobiles. Funny that they were all so close to each other. Was this a storage area for them? That must've been it. When she stepped into the open where there appeared to be none, white light flashed upon her and she could see what seemed like endless rows of cars. There must've been dozens! Jamie had only ever seen a few cars before, parked in the driveways of various homes on her way to market. When she and asked Madam Cox why the Aldens didn't have one she simply answered, "There are more efficient ways to transport oneself." She did not elaborate.

Jamie found the exit quickly, but took her time in the shadows of the city. She'd only see the occasional pair of red lights pass far past where the streetlamps could illuminate. Jamie named it "no man's land," a place she had heard was a death sentence for soldiers in the front lines during the Great War. She didn't like its mysteriousness, so she kept to the sidewalk. Despite all of her walking, Jamie found no park.

Suddenly, a gush of air threw itself at her and she could feel it push its way along her scalp, between every hair. She stared in awe at a lanky girl with purple, shoulder-length hair. She could've been Ladie's age. "Hello," she started in a nasally voice, "my name is Zethina House, sleep collector. Please stand firmly on the ground with your legs together and arms at your sides. Remove your bag, please. This won't take long." Jamie stared at Zethina. Who in the world was she? Jamie had never heard of a sleep collector before. Was that like a tax collector? Zethina sighed at her frozen state. "You _are_ Jamie Chadwick, eleven years old?" Jamie nodded. How did Zethina know her name? "You obviously haven't heard about the new law. If you are and unaccompanied minor, we have the right to collect twelve hours of sleep from you unless you need attend an important event. This will not count toward your required amount when you turn seventeen. Do you understand?" Jamie nodded again. "Are you seeking to attend an event that you can absolutely not miss within the next twelve hours?" Jamie wasn't quite sure what she was talking about, but shook her head. "Very well. Close your eyes, Miss. Chadwick." Jamie did as commanded. She first felt a tap on her head with a stick of some sort, then that original gush of wind, whipping about what little hair she had and tugging at her naval. "You may open them now." Jamie unsealed her eyes apprehensively. What if this woman had stolen from her bag? Still though, she had no desire to speak to the figure.

Jamie eyes bulged at what she saw. Bright light illuminating everything and everyone, a person on the street corner put a finger-length stick to their moth and pulled it away to release a breath of vapor, a crowd of men and women dressed in the same black and grey outfits, some carrying boxes at their sides, crossed a road that was quadruple the side of any Jamie had ever seen. People pushed past her and many almost stepped on her bag, oblivious to the world as they sipped from steaming paper cups or talked to no one while a curly wire jutted from their ear canal. Jamie repositioned her bag against her body and looked back to Zethina. "Don't let it happen again, or I may just pay you another visit. It was nice meeting you, Miss. Chadwick." The woman strictly turned and marching into a dead-end alley which Jamie thought was rather bizarre. How would she get out? She certainly didn't live there. Why would she not take the street?

Jamie's head was fogged for a few minutes as she walked, but eventually caught up with strangers' views. Many people gawked at her. Was it because of the veela enchantment? No. Women were staring too and these were more curious glances. A person with mocha skin grabbed her and flashed a light in her face with a metallic device he held out in front of them. She was about to ask him where the Leaky Cauldron was when her voice caught. That was odd. It had never done that before. She remembered Nathan once got a bad fever where his voice was so bad all she could make out was a groggy cough each time he spoke. Perhaps she had a fever? She felt her forehead. Only natural heat issued, not to mention, she felt fine. Why, then could she not speak?

After the boy gave up on her attempt to communicate, Jamie continued down the street, frustrated, until she found children drawing on the sidewalk with chalk. She grabbed a piece and tapped a girl's shoulder. "Hey! You can't have that!" she shouted. A robust woman came over to see what the fuss was and Jamie took the opportunity.

_Where is the Leaky Cauldron?_ She wrote.

The woman stared intently at her for a minute as if she was a long lost daughter, seeming to understand. "It's down the street, Honey. You're almost there. Just keep walking and you'll find it." Jamie nodded and smiled as her best expression of thanks and scurried down thesidewalk until she found it.

As soon as she entered, a short, bald man shouted, "We got another one!" She was led to a brick wall in the back, and before she had time to object, she was staring into Diagon Alley.


	4. A Dusturbing Conversation

Chapter 4–A Disturbing Conversation

Jamie goggled at the cobblestone street, chatter of people wearing long, black robes and pointed hats, and seemingly endless shops. It was real! Everything her mother had told her must exist! She stepped away from the brick wall barrier, gaping at the children who seemed to be ogling over an oddly shaped broomstick. Why would a cleaning supply be placed in a window like prime merchandise? What was the purpose of the hats? It was so warm; there was no need to conserve body heat.

She swiftly turned around when she heard the clatter of bricks and the entrance disappeared behind her. No! She patted the wall. How would she leave this place? Jamie sighed. She had just gotten here, so she would worry about it later. She could always ask someone. Then, she remembered. No, she couldn't. Her voice was gone! But, why? Why had her voce suddenly disappeared?

Jamie walked past a group of people chattering as she contemplated what had happened. "I swear," a teenaged girl said, "if we get another teacher like Headly for Charms, I'll scream." Of course! The enchantment on the house Bill had told her about! No one had ever told her what would happen if she left Bradmore before her seventeenth birthday. The enchantment must take away your voice!

"What did he get fired for?" the girl next to her asked.

"Oh, who knows." The girl said it was a Charms class. Enchantments and Charms were similar, weren't they? Maybe the new teacher would be able to return her voice once she got to Hogwarts. Speaking of which, she needed some parchment to write her return letter. The thirty-first was approaching fast. She decided to take her chances on these girls. They each had bags made of stately material. Perhaps they carried a bit of paper she could have. She tapped the shoulder of a girl over a foot taller than her with brown hair and olive skin. "Oh, hello," she greeted. "Can I help you?" Jamie mouthed the word "paper" and acted as if she were writing on her hand. "Oh," she giggled. "Got hit with a silencing spell, did you? People who just turned seventeen can be a little too enthusiastic. I would fix it, but I don't come of age until January. Oh, but you want something to write with…and on apparently. Let's see…I have some scrap and an old quill you could—" Jamie snatched the quill, paper, and some ink the girl was fondling. "Oh, honey, don't write on the ground." The group was now clustering around her.

_Dear Chase Douglas, Deputy Headmaster,_

"Oh, that explains it," one of them announced as if Jamie were not there. "He's writing a letter to Hogwarts. What an adorable first year. I wonder where his parents are."

"Perhaps he's muggle born."

"No, a representative is always sent with those ones to help them pay for things."

"Merlin's beard, what is he wearing?!"

"It looks like bags of chicken feed sewn together."

"The poor dear."

"He doesn't seem to care."

Jamie ignored the girls as she wrote to Chase Douglas, explaining that she had been abandoned by her parents and was stranded in London with no wizarding money to buy her supplies with. She would gladly attend Hogwarts, but, for the next month, she had nowhere to stay. She politely asked if the school could spare extra of whatever it had. Jamie read the letter over, making sure it explained everything and handed the girl her quill and ink back, smiling and nodding in thanks.

It wasn't hard to find the owlry. She just followed the screeches. Running inside, white tufts of dung were thrown down on all sides of her. She was afraid that if she opened her mouth to speak, she would eat some and, no matter how hungry she was, she would not resort to eating owl excrement. Then, she remembered that opening her mouth would again, prove to no avail. She was mute. She ran up to an owl perched on a low branch and showed him the back of the parchment on which she had written _Hogwarts_. The tiny, brown owl hooted and grabbed the parchment in a quick reflex and flew off with it in his beak.

"Hey!" A man coming from the back door shouted. "You have to pay to use these owls!" Jamie was used to running, but her clothes would make her about as incognito as a bright yellow duck in an empty pond. She put her glasses on to possibly aid in her hiding. Just half of an hour in the wizarding world and already she had become a delinquent! She was sure that the owl would find her. Her mother had always said that they were fueled by an inner magic they didn't need a wand to use.

People gaped at her as she ran down the cobblestone street. It was odd. No one in the village ever did, but perhaps that was because they were used to her clothing. She was well aware that what she wore was out of the ordinary, but it's what every girl under fifteen wore at Alden manor. Clothes were too expensive to buy for everyone. Jamie knew if she had proper clothing she would just sprout out of it. What was the use of having it? While it was common knowledge that most girls stopped growing by fifteen, boys continued to a later age, so Ben still wore his rags. He would until he was seventeen.

Jamie turned into a darker, less crowded street labeled Knockturn Alley. She waited there until, once again, she felt a gush of air in front of her and a pudgy man in black robes with a bald head was suddenly in front of her. Her first instinct was to run away. She didn't want another twelve hours of sleep taken away! She had things to do! But the man had her cornered at a shop entrance. "Ahem! My name is Hugh Irwin." _He we go_, she thought. "I received your letter and am here as your representative." Jamie just stared at him. Her representative? Representing what? Jamie pointed to her throat and shook her head. "Hit by a silencing charm, were you?" Jamie slapped her forehead.

It took over twenty minutes and a few silencing charm reversals to convince the man that she was dumb and had not been hexed in any way. The rest of the day was spent finding Jamie suitable living accommodations at the Leaky Cauldron where she was staying in the room next to a girl who seemed to do nothing, but sleep. Over the next month, Jamie received a wand and all of her school supplies from second hand stores in Diagon Alley with the help and money of Hugh Irwin. Jamie never took her glasses off anymore aside from when she went to bed. She had told Irwin that they were broken and he touched his wand to her forehead, muttering a spell. After touching his wand to the glasses, she put them on and could see perfectly. Many people chuckled at her swelled eyes, but she didn't care. As long as they were not gazing at her beauty, she was just fine.

She wrote to Irwin that she would, of course, pay the school back when she got the money, but he waved this away, saying there was a special grant for a muggle borns that applied just as much to her as it did to them. Jamie assumed that the sleeping girl in her bed chamber was muggle born, but, the question was, was Jamie? She had never known her father, so she certainly couldn't ask him if he was a wizard, but he had to be, for how else would her mother have known all those things about Hogwarts? Mama certainly wasn't a witch herself. Were she, Mama would've done magic all the time. Perhaps she wanted to hide her witch powers from Madam Alden? Jamie wasn't sure.

* * *

"Alrighty, then. Are you girls ready to go?" Irwin asked, fully dressed, arms outstretched. A wobbly groan came from a lump under the covers as Jamie spooned leftover split pea soup from the kitchen into her mouth. She'd never tasted anything so good in her entire life. Hot broth and lumpy, steaming potatoes greeted her taste buds. She didn't understand how any of the customers could call the food here awful. She had just been sent the mashed potatoes from a customer who rejected them and, after a month of Jamie living above their pub, the staff at the Leaky Cauldron knew that she would eat whatever they gave her, no questions asked. This was originally discovered the day after her arrival when she stopped a lady from tossing a spinach casserole.

"But, we found cockroaches in it!" the woman exclaimed. _Added protein_, Jamie wrote on something called a dry-erase board while giggling. That was what Madam Cox always used to say when Jamie would shudder at flies landing in her food. A muggle had come to the pub with the dry-erase board, so she'd asked him where he'd gotten it with some paper Irwin had given her. The next day, she used her candy money to buy one for herself. It was amazing what the thing could do. She could write a message and then erase it with her own skin! All it took was a special marker.

"Er…Jamie," he started. She looked up. "Are you absolutely _sure _you wouldn't like some more comfortable clothes? We could easily buy you some before you get on the train." He looked her over uneasily.

_Sir_, she wrote, _with all due respect, these clothes are comfortable to me._ Which wasn't entirely true, but she wouldn't have the school waste another Knut on her. Howarts had already bought all of her school supplies which she knew were not cheap even if they were purchased second hand. _Besides, I'll just change into my robes when I get on the train._ Apparently, she was not to wear her robes around King's Cross in presence of muggles.

He sighed, "Enjore, the train leaves in two hours and it will not wait for you. Please be ready in the next twenty minutes, so we can start for King's Cross. Irwin popped out of sight and a rush of air whipped back Jamie's hair.

Suddenly, the lump in the bed moved and a girl with light brown skin emerged. Jamie had only ever seen the jet-black hair sway from under the covers of her cot. _Good morning, Onjor_, Jamie wrote. She had never heard the girl's name before.

"Er…it's not spelled like that," she said groggily. She crossed the room and scribbled _Enjore_ on her board in messy hand writing. "Ugh." She rubbed her eyes. "Could you maybe leave for a bit? I want to get changed." Jamie nodded and left to respect her privacy, roaming the halls above the Leaky Cauldron as she did most days since she was not allowed to leave the premises. She was searching for mice. Familiars were the one thing that was not required for school, so she did not get one, but one would be helpful to have. Jamie had set up traps in the heating vents and repair closets since it was unlikely she would catch one by hand, but today she removed them, disappointed. It appeared that the Leaky Cauldron had ways of keeping the pests away. She would have to go without a pet for now.

On the way to King's Cross, Enjore rubbed her eyes and looked Jamie over, but while she gazed at her with interest, Irwin had a worried look on his face. She didn't understand why her clothes were so bad. All her life, she'd worn them and now, they were suddenly unacceptable. King's Cross was amazing. She felt as if she had stepped into another world, which she was technically about to. "Where exactly is platform nine and three quarters?" Enjore yawned. "How exactly can you have three quarters of a platform? Did the builders get lazy?" Jamie giggled silently. She supposed that if she had never heard of the Hogwarts Express as a child, she might think the same thing, but it was still enjoyable to watch Enjore's face when a teenaged boy ran through the pillar separating platforms nine and ten. "B-but what happened to him? Is he alright?"

"Quite," Irwin reassured. "He simply traveled to the next platform." Jamie's stomach had butterflies. She'd never traveled through the barrier before and was a little afraid that it would not let her through. Gathering courage as she ran, she charged, head first, into the pillar. She expected to feel something when she went through, but bumped the teenaged boy in front of her instead. He did not wait for her to write an apology. "Alright then, you two. Make sure you get on the train and do stick together."

"You're not coming?"

"I'll be at the front of the train, leading the new prefects."

"Prefects?" The bald man had disappeared on the train, though, unable to answer her question. "Well," she said, looking over at Jamie. They appeared to be precisely the same height. "We should get on the train so you can change out of those rags. You're getting odd looks already." Jamie nodded. She would be relieved when people were no longer looking at her as if she were an exotic dancer.

They quickly found a compartment as they had arrived quite early and Jamie changed into her robes. She had never felt anything so soft against her skin. It was an absolute luxury to have cotton constantly on your skin. Jamie left her compartment while (surprise, surprise) Enjore slept. Jamie wanted time to explore the train. Maybe she would even make friends here since Enjore seemed more prone on dreaming than anything else. Walking, she caught glimpses of conversations, mostly about boys and girls people fancied or Quidditch, but one made her pause.

"Did you hear about that veela enchantment that was just discovered?"

"Yeah! The Daily Prophet said that it might have come over two decades ago!"

"I know. I can't believe it took them so long to find out about."

"I hear they had an inside source. There's a group of manors raising enchanted babies. The only thing is that they've got really old spells on them, so it's hard for the ministry to get any information about their whereabouts. It's virtually impossible to get into a manor if you weren't born there and if you were born there, you're brainwashed to never tell anyone about it. I wonder how they got that source."

Jamie listened intently. She had a veela enchantment, but had never thought of it as rare until that moment. Maybe Bill was right. Maybe there truly was something fishy about Alden Manor; she just couldn't see it because she was raised there. "Hey!" Jamie swiveled around. "Grab that ferret!" A figure jumped and, before she knew it, a girl with shoulder-length, blonde locks was on top of her with a knot of fuzz in her hands. "Oofles! Great Gandalf, will you never listen? I told you not to steal." The girl was sitting on Jamie's stomach and she could make out a plastic wrapper in the white ferret's mouth. It had bright red eyes which Jamie had never seen on an animal before. Never mind that. This girl was making it impossible to breathe! "Sorry 'bout that." The girl said, rising. She looked to be the same age as Jamie, but her accent was unusual. Where was she from?


	5. The Sorting

Chapter 5-The Sorting

Jamie didn't see the rambunctious girl until the sorting that night. The train ride had been uneventful. People tried to talk to her, but she just didn't feel like writing everything she wanted to say at the time, so she simply ignored them, staring out the window even when it got dark. She noticed Enjore constantly shifting her shoulders and unnaturally blinking her eyes as if something kept touching her neck that she couldn't quite place. There was definitely something not quite right about her.

Jamie looked down the line of children. There must've been a little under forty just for this year! She tried to focus on one thing at a time but there were just so many things she'd only ever imagined from her mother's stories. Hundreds of candles floated above her head, seeming to rise into the night sky, clear as purified water. She had, of course, heard about the enchanted ceiling, but it was so much different seeing it than hearing about it from Mama! She couldn't quite put her finger on the purpose of the grungy hat sitting on a wooden pedestal, looking to be the center of attention. She nearly jumped out of her uniform when she heard it sing.

Good day, I am the sorting hat

I've been here since the school began

I guarantee, no mouse or rat

Can sort a student like a can.

There's Gryffindor, where bravery lies

Courageous you must be

But not everyone qualifies

The gutsy hold the key.

Will you be in Hufflepuff

Where you must be devoted?

A shining diamond in the rough

With fairness, you are coated.

You're possibly in Ravenclaw

With those who are enlightened

Their stunning knowledge causes awe

And corners to be brightened.

In Slytherin, you'll find your fill

of silver and dark greens

For these sly folk, the ends will

Justify the means.

So, fit me down, over your eyes,

I promise I don't bite.

I sometimes prove to bring surprise,

But I am always right.

Jamie stared, wide-eyed along with Enjore. How could her mother have possibly have left this out in her bedtime stories?! It was the most fantastic thing Jamie had ever seen! A singing hat that sorted people into their houses! Imagine that! She didn't need to, though; the thing was right in front of her!

A man who must've only been in his late thirties stood next to the patched and tattered hat. "Arcturus Abney!" he called. The names appeared to be going in alphabetical order: Abney, Appleby, and then Becket. That meant that her name was coming up. She was Chadwick. Right at the beginning of the alphabet. Oh, how she wished she were later. "Jamie Chadwick!" She jumped out of nervousness. The house this hat picked for her would be the place that she stayed for her entire seven years at Hogwarts.

Hands shaking, Jamie stepped up to the pedestal and sat there, all eyes on her, until the rim of it covered her eyes. _Oh_, a voice echoed in her head. _I see you are loyal and unafraid._ What did that mean? Was she going to be put in Hufflepuff for her thoughts of home or Gryffindor for her courage? Wait…What courage? She had none! _Be aware, Jamie, that courage is not always equivalent to slaying dragons._ Was this thing reading her mind? It must've been. She wondered how an inanimate object could somehow think for itself. And what did it mean when it said that? She knew that courage came from within, but she had yet to figure out whether that meant that one was foolish or brave. Maybe both. _I had original intent to place you in Hufflepuff, but you have proven yourself worthy of another house through the questions you have asked._ "Ravenclaw!" the hat announced.

Ravenclaw? Of all the houses, she had never seen herself there. Her mother had said that Ravenclaws were clever and insightful, but she was neither those things. She hardly considered herself a smart person. She was rather naïve and didn't fully understand the world. Why had it chosen Ravenclaw?

When the man took the sorting hat from her head, their eyes met through a thick lens and he frowned. As she walked to the cheering table, she thought she heard him say, "It seems I have made a mistake." A mistake? What on Earth could he mean? Was she not really a witch? No. In her book, _Hogwarts, A History_, it had said that only witches and wizards could see the true form of Hogwarts. Then, what could he have meant?

Jamie didn't pay attention to the rest of the sorting. Her ears were ringing. It appeared that the nervousness would take a while to wear off. She was in a place she had only ever dreamed about! She had the opportunity to make friends with any one of the hundreds of people around her! Of course, that would be much harder with no voice. For reasons unknown to herself, she smiled upon seeing Enjore take a seat next to her. At least she had a place to start.

* * *

A pair of sixth year Ravenclaw prefects asked for all of the first years to please follow them. Jamie thought the girl looked extremely familiar, for some reason, but couldn't place it. The prefects led them to the fifth floor, up a tall, winding staircase, and to a stone wall, bare aside from an eagle knocker looking terribly out of place. This must've been the entrance to the Ravenclaw common room. Jamie was excited. This was still new to her considering Jamie's mother had only ever told her about the Hufflepuff common room. She realized that this must mean that one of her parents must've been a Hufflepuff. The boy swung the brass eagle against the wall, echoing sound along the corridor. The eagle's mouth opened to Jamie's surprise and a musical voice flowed from its beak. "Will an argument be strongest if it is started ethos, logos, or pathos?" Jamie had no idea what any of those word meant.

The boy opened his mouth, but the girl prefect stopped him. "Leo, why don't we let one of them try and figure it out?" The boy looked to the crowd and shrugged. Enjore immediately swung her hand in the air. "Go ahead," the girl encouraged.

"Logic will lead you to emotion if you steer an appropriate course and will always keep the reigns of the attendant. In theory, logos would be the strongest way to start and argument."

"Well perceived," the eagle cooed. "You may pass."

"That was incredible! I don't think anyone's ever thought a question through so well on the first time before."

"Vannozza, let's not get them big-headed on their first day."

"Excuse me, Leo, but I distinctly remember you telling the eagle on you first time up here that Sirius was part of the Dog Constellation!"

"Oh, c'mon; Dog Star, Dog Constellation. Anyone could've made the mistake."

"Except she was asking you about the emotional state of being serious, not the astronomy term!"

"And you'll never let me live it down."

As Jamie walked past the girl, through the doors that appeared around the eagle, she called to her. "Hey, you're that girl I lent the paper and quill to! Finally get that spell reversed?" she joked. Jamie pointed to her throat and shook her head, trying to say that it was no spell, but she didn't seem to understand. "Wait, seriously? After a _month_, you still have it?! Here." She tool out her wand, but Enjore stopped her and explained.

When Jamie finally got to the common room, she met the head of her house whose name was Professor Becket, the astronomy teacher. She instructed that the left hallway led to the girls' dormitories and the boys' were to the right. All Jamie wanted to do was go to bed. It was late and had been a long day. When she joined the group of girls going into the dorms, though, Enjore started laughing. What was up? Was there something on her face? "What do you think you're _doing_?" A girl that could've been a fourth year asked her, stepping in front of Jamie. "Didn't you hear Becket? You go over there!" The girl pointed the other way. Jamie was too tired to object, so she followed the boys into the first years' dorms and fell asleep as soon as she hit her bed.


	6. Rooftop Waking

Chapter 6-Rooftop Waking

Jamie had a deep, dreamless sleep. The night before, everyone at the Ravenclaw House table was talking to her. None of them really were listening. That was how no one found out that she was dumb. She discovered that Enjore had a younger, five year old brother with another sibling on the way. Her mother and father were both natives of India, but had moved to the UK to be with family that had emigrated there long before and had her three years later. Another boy, next to her, couldn't stop talking about his friend, Pamela, who he swore he was going to marry one day, if he could only tell her that he came from a family of wizards.

Jamie was laying on something cold and solid. Had she fallen on the floor in her sleep? No. The floors had rugs. The sky above her was slowly fading into light. Wait. The sky above her? There was supposed to be a ceiling over her head, wasn't there? Jamie sat up and looked around herself. Cones covered in shingles surrounded the flat of stone she was sleeping on. She was on the roof! What had happened? Was this a usual thing that happened to first years? Mama had never told her anything about spontaneously sleepwalking onto the roof, but, then again, she also hadn't told her about a completely far out hat that sang and sorted the houses.

Jamie stared off into the dawn. The sun was peeking over the trees, only slightly disrupted by the billow of smoke coming from the chimney in a hut near the forbidden forest. Jamie observed the most beautiful sunrise she thought she had ever seen. Birds whistled all around her and the breeze pulled at her hair as if folk were disapperating everywhere. The endless colors of the sun shined off the lake, flashing their colors against the roof's thousands of shingles.

Jamie stayed until the sun climbed high enough that it didn't need other colors to help it up. Looking around, she decided that she would adore coming to this place every morning if she could. She would have to find the entrance and see if it was possible for her to make the trip each day. Searching the area, Jamie found that the closest window was over a meter below the ceiling, but as she climbed down, she got the view of a much safer window which was open and had a balcony jutting from its edge. All she had to do was make it down the roof's slant. Running over to the slant, she waved to Professor Wilcox, the Herbology teacher who had been introduced the night before by the headmaster, Professor Darby. Professor Wilcox dropped the steaming cup she was holding, making it shatter on the floor of the corridor. Quickly, she uttered a spell and the mug instantly flew back to its original form. Jamie heard an echo from Wilcox as she held a flat hand up to Jamie and rushed off, down the hallway.

Jamie shrugged and made a move for the tilt in the roof. She descended slowly, shaking wildly, knowing that if she fell, it would be the last of her. Then, her robes caught on the edge of a shingle. She tried to yank them off, but it was no use. She needed more leverage. She abandoned her caution and sat up, tugging at her robes. Murmurs rebounded off the stone walls below as people made their way to the Great Hall and caught sight of her in the courtyard. Finally, in a large yank, her robes were wrenched free, but, unfortunately, so was she. Jamie's screams couldn't be heard, but her mouth was certainly open as she rolled down the roof. The tilt was much too steep and she had no way of controlling her downward descent.

Flung off the side of the roof, everything seemed to go slower and she quickly spotted the railing to the balcony she had been aiming for just inches away. So close. Almost there. Got it. She did not grab the top as she had planned, but instead clutched the top of the tiny metal poles the railing was composed of. Her hands slid down the rusty spikes and she could practically feel the fabric of her callused skin spitting open. Her hands slamming on the rock which wasn't too much fun either, but at least the floor wasn't composed of knives. What was she thinking? At least she was alive! People below applauded. _Thanks_, she thought sarcastically. "Levicorpus!" A male voice shouted and she was lifted by her ankle into the air, above the balcony. Why couldn't he have done that when she was rolling down the roof?

Blood gushed from the cuts in her hands and dripped down her fingers, splashing like crimson raindrops onto the stone floor. The boy shouted something which was now drowned out by the chattering below and she was cast downward, landing roughly on the floor. After placing her cracked glasses from her pocket on her head, she tore off her cloak, and wrapped it around her hands, so she was only wearing her trainer. Walking slowly into the room, it appeared to be nothing but a storage area. She jumped when a painted picture of a knight on his pony shouted at her. "Come and fight me like a man!" The little picture looked utterly ridiculous running from side to side with his sword, pushing his pony to go forward, and mocking her like he wasn't four inches tall.

She took her glasses off for a moment, annoyed at how grungy they had gotten and began to wipe them against the robes engulfing her hands. "Ah!" He pronounced. "I have been mistaken! My foe is nothing but a maiden…and a fair one at that! Oh, fairest of ladies in waiting, I express my humblest apologies. My eyes have deceived me! How could one of such beauty ever be mistaken for a male such as me?" Jamie ogled at him for a moment, not sure if she would ever meet a man so odd again in her entire life, and returned her glasses to their rightful place in front of her eyes. "Alas, I have found the dilemma! It is those bulbs you stare through! They hide those stunning brown eyes that could battle the moon in grace and win each time."

"Why, Sir Cadogan, I had no idea you could be so poetic." Jamie jerked her head in surprise to find Vannozza at the room's entrance with a panting Leo following soon behind. "We'll take you to Madam Quigley, Honey," Vannozza told her, leading Jamie to the door. "Feel free to join us once you catch your breath," she called up to Leo as they began to descend.

"So…many…stairs," he panted. Vannozza giggled. Eventually, the two got her a lively woman, scrambling around an empty hospital wing.

"Classes haven't even started yet and I have an injury? Let's see," she said, unwrapping the robes from Jamie hands. The three looked down at Jamie's hands, stained red and both sporting large slashes down their center. "Not too bad." Not too bad? Not too bad! She wouldn't be able to use her hands for a week! "Here we go." The woman drew a long, skinny wand from her robes and suddenly a stinging erupted in Jamie's hands. Her first instinct was to close them tight, but she couldn't. They were frozen into place. A warm feeling seemed into the wound and Jamie looked to see the blood harden until the cuts scabbed over and skin worked its way from the edge of her cut until nothing was left. That was incredible! Jamie felt her hands and they were just like new! Brand new, in fact. The place where the skin had regrown felt baby soft compared to the rest of the space on her hands. Madam Quigley rubbed some cream over her hands and waved goodbye.

Jamie stared after her in awe, wondering if one day she would be able to do magic like that. Jamie mouthed, _Thank her, please_, to Vannozza, but she shook her head. "That's her job. The person you really should be thanking is Leo. He saved you up there. He's the one that pushed you toward the railing and shouted that levitating spell."

"Er…Sorry I couldn't get you before you fell off the roof. I didn't have a clear shot."

"He was amazing," Vannozza beamed at him. Leo looked up at her and smiled. "So, are we ready for some breakfast? I don't know about you two, but I'm starving."

* * *

After returning to Ravenclaw Common Room with Vannozza and Leo, Jamie got her bag and put on a fresh cloak. Her other one had been taken to be washed. Coming down the hall, she spotted Enjore, stretching before exiting the common room and joined her to breakfast.

The night before, Jamie was shocked at all of the food. Just one plate could feed everyone in Shack Number Two for a day. Maybe she should take some with her? No. Where would she store it? What did they do with all of the leftovers? Jamie nearly cried to think of them tossing what wasn't eaten. They couldn't. There must have been a way to preserve it through magic. Food was too precious to be wasted.

As Enjore stuffed eggs into her mouth, Jamie listened to the boys across the table chatting. "It was wicked cold. If they hadn't put me down there with a blanket, I swear I would've frozen in the dungeons. Not to mention, it took me forever to find my way out. Luckily, Nearly-Headless Nick helped me out."

"You call that bad?" A redhead joined. "I woke up on the Astronomy Tower to Peeves drawing on my face! It's going to take forever to get this ink off!"

A boy with shoulder-length brown hair chuckled. "Mates, honestly, count your blessings. At least you weren't covered in owl dung from being stuffed in the owlry while you were sleeping."

Jamie, wanting to reveal her story and curious as to what happened to them, wrote her story on her board, shortened a tad. _I woke up on the roof and fell off._ The boys stared at her.

The long haired one raised his eyebrows. "Not that I don't believe you or anything, but you don't look like a ghost to me." She soundlessly chuckled and wrote the rest of what happened. "So, that's what I've been hearing about a kid who got their hands split open! Who are you, man?"

"Jamie!" Enjore jumped in, winking at Jamie. "And I'm Enjore."

He smiled crookedly. "I'm Rodney Rush, future Quidditch professional," he said, running his hands through his hair. "Call me in a few years if you ever need a date and I might just have some tickets to a game lying around."

"You might want to lose the dreads first, my future sweaty broom-hugger."

"What's wrong with a little style around my head? I don't see a problem with long hair as long as one cares for it."

"I see a problem. It's an eleven year old Jesus without the tunic."

"I'm Peter Roscoe," the red-haired boy said while the two continued bickering, "but my friends call me Roscoe and Rodney, Rush. This," he motioned to the boy who got trapped in the dungeons, "Is Francis Maggadino. Call him whatever, in Merlin's name, you want. He's the brother of that hot prefect who led us to the common room yesterday, Vannozza."

"I think I can introduce myself, thank you," the dark-haired boy said, annoyed. "And don't call my sister 'hot.' I'm right here!"

"Fine. I'll do it when you're not around."

"The boy turned red in the face." Jamie wasn't sure how much she liked these boys. They seemed a bit full of themselves. _What about the other one?_ she wrote. "Other one? Oh! You mean Tyler. Yeah. He's kind of shy. I don't know if he'll come down."

"Either that or he's still stuck in the place the Ravenclaw Hellions put him last night," Frances suggested.

"Ravenclaw Hellions?" Enjore asked for Jamie. "Who are they?"

Roscoe shrugged. "A group of troublemakers that keep their identity secret."

"One day, I hope I'm lucky enough to get in," Rush commented. "Ya know," he started, leaning over a plate of eggs toward Enjore. "The brotherhood is mostly made up of boys, but they've been known to accept a few especially menacing females. I could put a good word in for you once I get on the inside, but uh…" He pushed his hand through his hair a second time and whispered, "You'd have to show me how bad you can be."

"The beauty parlor is mostly made up of girls, but they've been known to cut the hair of the homeless for free. I could put in a good word for you, but uh…" Enjore neared his face so that her and Rush's noses were practically touching. "They've been known to reject cutting the hair of those whose faces are terribly disfigured."

Rush smiled, deciding to take a different angle. "Is that why your hair is so long?" he asked. Enjore sat back down.

"Indeed. I keep entering with pictures of you to show them their new wig donor and everyone runs out screaming for some reason."

"Pictures of me?" he smiled, taking a seat. "That's so sweet, Enjore. I can't believe you think about me so much that you keep photos of me, so you can remind yourself that I'm in your life."

"Oh, no. I keep those photos to put in the girl's bathroom as a reminder to them of what's coming out the other end."

Rush touched his hand to his chest and looked to Francis. "Mate, I think I'm in love." Enjore rolled her eyes.


	7. Trouble With Nargles

Chapter 7-Trouble With Nargles

During breakfast, Jamie got her class schedule. This was so exciting! She was finally going to be like every other child, attending school, even if it was magical. The day started out with Charms where Rush had decided to take a spot next to Enjore, to annoy, her before Jamie could, so she sat alone.

"Ahem," Irwin called. Jamie had been disappointed to hear that he had no knowledge of an enchantment that could remove your voice and, therefore, could not remove it, but he did say that he would search the school's library for a solution and she should do the same. "In this class you will be learning how to conduct your wand and the basics of spells. I hope everyone has met at least one of our foreign students from the ambassador's program. I understand there are four; one in each house. I believe that here we have Carmen from Spain." He gestured to a Hufflepuff girl with slightly lighter skin than Enjore's.

"And over here, we have Billie from the good old U.S. of A.!" A girl in the middle of the room, average height with shoulder-length, dirty blonde hair introduced herself. "No offense to the UK or anything, but we seriously rock."

"In this room, we raise our hand before speaking, Billie."

"Oh, right. Sorry, man."

"Professor Irwin or Sir please."

"Right. Pro Irwin. Got it."

Irwin sighed and continued class, teaching them to swish and flick their wands as he was doing until a boy trudged in, shoes and hair sopping wet. "W-w-woke up in the g-g-girl's b-b-bathroom." _So, this must be Tyler, the last first year Ravenclaw_, Jamie thought.

"And your shoes, Mr. Hobbs?"

"M-M-Moaning M-Myrtle," he studdered.

"Every year…hellions," was all Jamie could make out from his mumbling. "Very well, Mr. Hobbs. Take a seat next to Jamie." She supposed he didn't call her Miss. Chadwick because he had spent the past month calling her by her first name. No matter, it most likely would not stay that way.

_What did Moaning Myrtle do?_ she wrote. _You know, to get you shoes wet. _He looked up at her for a moment, but then decided his hands were more interesting, blushing madly.

"Soaked m-me with t-t-toilet w-water to w-wake me up," he stuttered in a small voice.

_You're lucky. I landed up on the roof._

The boy went wide eyed. "B-b-but they only t-take b-b-boys from their d-d-dorms."

"Excuse me! No talking does not also mean no listening!" The two were silenced.

As Jamie went through her day, there was more and more talk of a student who fell off the roof, but no one quite knew who they were. They were too high up for anyone to see what they looked like. Rush, at one point began to give her away saying, "Hey, I know who you're talking about! That was—OUCH! Merlin, what did you do that for?" Enjore had swatted him.

"Honestly, Rush. Jamie is dumb. It might be better to keep this information on the hush-hush." Jamie appreciated how Enjore was trying to keep her condition a secret, but she honestly didn't think that it would last long. What was she supposed to do if a stranger tried socializing with her? Smile and pretend she was chewing the entire time? It simply wouldn't work. She couldn't avoid conversation forever.

The first day of school went quite smoothly, but when Jamie got back to her four-poster, she found Tyler staring at her from across the room. She could tell that he wanted to say something, but she couldn't place what it was. He was too shy to speak. Jamie thought that perhaps his stutter made him lose confidence.

Over the next two weeks, Jamie's classes were fun and exciting. In Charms, they had learned, not only how to levitate small objects, but how to produce water from the tip of a wand! It was exciting and rather annoying, getting water out of her ears and having them ring for the rest of the day. Carmen even slipped in a puddle hurt her arm.

The weather had been dreary since that first day of school, so Jamie had not yet begun to explore Hogarts for the entrance to the roof. There must've been one. How else would the Ravenclaw Hellions have gotten her up there?

Friday morning, in the Great Hall for breakfast, a flock of owls landed amongst the food, carrying letters in their beaks and parcels around their feet. A beautiful, silvery owl skidded across the table, past Rush and Jamie until Enjore caught it and held the small bird, taking a parcel and popping a treat in its mouth. Another owl flew past, gracefully dropped a note onto the table. "I finally turn eleven today," Enjore announced.

_Happy Birthday_, Jamie wrote.

"Yes...I've been meaning to talk you about an easier method of communication—"

"But, that can wait," Rush itched. "What've you got?"

"Hm? Oh. Let's see. The usual birthday card with some money. Ugh. I keep telling her that pounds will do me no good in the wizarding world."

"What about your package?"

"Hm?" Enjore looked in surprise to the parcel weighing the owl down to the table. "Humph. Wonder who sent that. My parents haven't given me a birthday present since I was a baby and got toys." She untied and the parcel and the owl began to nip Jamie until she resolved to pet it. It apparently only wanted attention. Enjore opened the small box and took out what looked like a top. "Err…What is it?"

"It's a sneakoscope! Looks like a new model too."

"What does it do?" Enjore asked curiously, examining the small top.

"You leave it near you during the day and it says if you're being betrayed. Well, this one might just be to tell if someone is lying to you."

Enjore picked up a slip of paper in the wrappings. "We hope you enjoy your new sneakoscope. This incredible object can be set to three strengths: one meter, room size, or one kilometer. It glows blue if you someone is eavesdropping on your conversation, yellow if someone near you is keeping a secret from you, and purple if both deceivers are near. Send an owl to our return address…etcetera…etcetera…"

"Well, let's fire this baby up!" Rush said, excited.

"Why are you more into this than I am?"

"You just haven't been exposed enough."

"Shouldn't I be less excited the more exposed I get?"

"Just set the darn thing on the table!"

"Oh, alright! Here, now, I'll start at one kilometer." The sneakoscope lit up yellow and began to spin wildly.

"Got a few enemies already, I see," Rush smiled. Enjore, however, frowned.

"Let's take it down to just the room," she suggested. The sneakoscope still spun, illuminating its yellow color. "Hmmm. Just one meter?" Enjore clicked the miniature lever on top of the thing, but the yellow top continued to hum as it spun relentlessly clockwise. The Ravenclaw first years stared at Enjore's obscure birthday present.

"You know," Roscoe commented, "either that thing is broken upon opening or one of us if keeping a secret."

Enjore shrugged. "It's just a novelty. It could easily spin whenever it wants to cook up trouble."

"You're no fun, Enjore," Rush complained. "Live a little. One of us could be holding a pledge to the long gone Lord Voldemort, hoping for his eventual return."

"Oh, put a cork in it, Rush."

"Who sent you that?" Francis asked curiously.

Enjore shrugged. "They didn't leave their name."

"Someone's got a secret admirer," Roscoe joked.

"It couldn't have been anyone from my family. They're all muggles. They don't know how to get a hold of wizard products. The only reason they were able to send me this was because I sent them an owl the other day, telling them I was safe, sound, and settled in. I'll have to thank my mother for the card." As she took out a quill, ink, and paper, Jamie remembered her own family. Nathan and Ben and Tony had all gone over a month without any word from her! How could she not tell them where she was?! Immediately, she copied Enjore and wrote to her brothers.

_Dear Tony, Bill, and Nathan,_

_Have no worries, I am safe at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. It really exists! I will write you a more elaborate letter when I have the time._

_-Jamie_

She got up and left her table immediately. "Okay, bye, Jamie. Don't tell us where you're going or anything," Roscoe said sarcastically. "We'll figure it out."

"Dude, why do you care where he's—"

Jamie left the Great Hall, making her way to the owlry she had been shown on Tuesday. This one, she thankfully didn't have to pay for. Jamie entered the owlry with her letter, but remembered she had to write the address. Setting the letter down on a desk in the room's corner, she groped her bag for a quill and ink. _There they are_, she thought, grabbing them, but when she looked up, the letter was gone. She looked around the desk thinking that possibly the wind had blown it aside. There was a chilly, humid draft coming in from outside. A brown owl flew down to her; the letter precariously stuck between its left wing and torso. She pried the letter up and looked at the owl quizzically. How had it done that? It's not like the creatures had an appendage that could put it there. They held things with their beak and claws. Looking back to her hand, the letter was no longer there, but back on the table! What was going on? She snatched up the letter quickly, before it had time to disappear again, and fed it to the owl that, in turn, flew happily out the window.

"There you are," Enjore yawned. "What was that about?"

_Had to send a letter._

"And it couldn't wait until after breakfast?" Tyler followed Enjore's example, yawning and rubbing his eyes which sported half circles on their undersides as if someone had given him two black eyes in exact proportion to his face.

"What's up with you? You look like you haven't slept in days."

"He hasn't," Roscoe replied. "Nargles keep you up again, did they?"

"I d-d-don't c-c-care w-what you say. They're real." Tyler stammered.

"Of course they are, mate. Just like Babbity and thestrals and aliens from outerspace…"

"Sh-shut up! J-j-just b-b-because you c-c-can't see them d-d-doesn't m-mean they aren't there."

"What are nargles?" Enjore questioned.

Roscoe smiled. "They're little make-believe characters that cause mischief."

"They're not m-m-make-b-b-b-believe!"

"Why is it, then that they're conveniently invisible?"

"I t-t-told you. They're not invisib-b-ble. They're j-j-just good at hiding."

"Oh, of course, mate. How could I have forgotten?"

"We have a broom flying lesson today!" Enjore said, excitedly.

"You know, Enjore. If you ever need some personal instruction—"

"Save it, Rush."

After potions that morning, where Jamie managed to create a living glob of red goo instead of a sleeping potion, they were to report outside the front entrance of Hogwarts. A significantly younger teacher than Jamie had expected stepped in front of them. She looked to only be in her twenties, yet had long, white hair. "Hello, everyone, my name is Terri Townsend, Professor Townsend to you. I am the Care of Magical Creatures professor as well as the game keeper, but today I will instruct you in your first flying lesson. Alright, Slytherin line up on one end and Ravenclaw, stand in a line, each person facing one Slytherin. Alright? Good, then. Now that we're all organized, I'll hand out our broomsticks." Jamie looked down at the oddly shaped red broom in front of her. She had learned that these were used for flying, but she couldn't imagine how.

"You've got a Terrain Glider," Rush said in awe. "Wanna trade? I'm stuck with the Air Rug 2100."

"Honestly, Rush, what's the difference?" Enjore said. "You said yourself that the school only has old models."

"But hers is newer than mine and, besides, she'll have a rough time riding it anyway. I'm practically a pro. Been riding since I was a kid. I'll be able to tell the difference."

"You'll also be able to tell the difference between your eye now and when it's black."

He turned to Jamie. "The violence of this one."

"EVERYONE, PLEASE PLACE YOUR BROOMS ON THE GROUND NEXT TO YOU, SO WE MAY BEGIN! Good. Alright, now place your hand above your broom and firmly say 'up.' If you do this correctly, the broom should come right to you. Begin." The air was suddenly surrounded by children calling to their brooms. While some brooms wiggled on the ground, others floated in midair and then dropped back to Earth. A Slytherin boy was even chased by his broom around the group until Professor Townsend caught it and told the grumbling boy to try again.

Suddenly, Enjore and Rush shouted, "UP" simultaneously and their brooms directly rushed up to greet their hands, making Enjore wobble a bit in her stance. "Not bad for a muggle-born," Rush complimented. He frowned. "Hey, why does this say Sonic 2100 instead of Air Rug?"

"I've got the Air Rug," Enjore proclaimed, surprised. "Hey, how'd you do that? How'd you switch our brooms?"

"As much as I'd love to take the credit for this one, it wasn't me. Why would I want the Sonic? It sucks."

"Well, then who switched our brooms?"

_Up!_ Jamie thought, shutting her eyes tight for concentration. She had to say all of her spells mentally which was hard, but once she got good at it, she wouldn't have to learn how to in later years. The broom struggled for a moment, but decided to take refuge in her palm. She looked at the broom, puzzled. It was no longer red, but brown and the silver words engraved on the edge now said Air Rug 2090. What was going on?

"Hey!" She looked up at a Slytherin girl with dark hair and high pig tails on either side of her head, holding a red broom that looked identical to the one Jamie had just been trying to catch. "What's the big idea?" Jamie heard another group farther down complain that someone had switched their brooms as well.

"N-n-nargles!" Tyler shouted, standing next to Jamie.

"Tyler, I told you this morning. There is no such thing as nargles. You've been reading too many novels by Luna Lovegood." Roscoe called to him over a Ravenclaw girl. "It's all in your head, mate. Er…can I have my broom back, Diana?" Suddenly, Jamie looked down to see her original red broom. "Diana, seriously. Are you the one who's doing that? You've got to teach me that spell."

"Roscoe, I told you, it's not—Hey!" All the brooms had wrenched themselves from everyone's hands and were thrown to the ground. "What in the name of Merlin is going on?"

"You guys say 'Merlin'?" Billie asked. "That is so weird. In the states, we say Gandalf."

Roscoe frowned. "You think that saying Merlin is weird compared to broomsticks going rogue?"

"IT'S N-N-N-NARGLES!"

"Oh, would you quit it with the nargles!" Everyone was bickering to each other and it was hard for Jamie to try and figure out what she believed. On one hand, nargles did sound like more of a plausible explanation than broomsticks randomly switching, but Roscoe kept saying they were hogwash. Then again, how could he be in a school of magic and doubt that anything existed?

Jamie's broom picked itself up and began to swordfight with the Air Rug 2090. "Check it out!" someone shouted as multiple brooms began to follow the example.

"Yah!" Tyler ducked as a broom swung directly for his head. "W-w-what's going on?!" A broom pushed itself between Enjore's legs, so she was suddenly riding it backwards. Rush immediately decided to hop a broom to ride up and help her out when it bucked him off as if it were a wild horse. Annoyed, he jumped back on with more vigor and shut his eyes as the broom shook him around. Meanwhile, Jamie was trying to dodge the brooms as they attempted to fly under her legs as well.

"Quick question for you, Tyler," Roscoe shouted over the screaming as he battled his broomstick with a decently sized tree branch he had found. "Completely hypothetical, of course, but how exactly to you get rid of a nargle?"

"C-c-can't kill it!"

"Okay, just stop it, then?"

"You c-c-can't stop w-what you c-c-can't see."

"BLOODY TERRIFIC!"

"LANGUAGE, YOUNG MAN!" Professor Townsend shouted as she used a freezing charm to stop all of the brooms in mid-air "Phew. Alrighty, then, could you all gather up the brooms and bring them to me?"

"Er…Professor?" Francis asked.

"Hm? What is it?"

"What exactly are you planning on doing about Enjore?" Twenty feet above the ground, Enjore was shaking like a leaf in the wind, groping her broomstick for dear life.


	8. An Unusual Reply

Chapter 8-An Unusual Reply

Jamie pushed a strip of steaming bacon into her mouth. She had been reluctant to eat it at first. She had never seen anything like it before. Biting into the crunchy meat, her mouth was drowning in saliva as she tasted how delicious the greasy feat was. In fact, most of the things she had never seen before ended up lolling her taste buds. Today, when Jamie came to the Great Hall for breakfast, the Ravenclaw table was half empty. _Where is everybody?_ She wrote to Diana.

Enjore had, actually, started giving her lessons in sign language. She claimed that her aunt was deaf and often used what she called SEE, or Signed Exact English. Jamie only knew very basic words that she would occasionally use instead of writing like 'library,' 'professor,' or 'book,' but she and Enjore were working on new signs to use for magic. The boys liked jumping in on this part, adding odd things like making a farting noise with your armpit or snogging the nearest boy. Enjore actually laughed at a lot of their suggestions. It seemed that she was finally warming to Rush despite their constant arguing.

"Most of them went to see the Quidditch tryouts. First of the month, you know." Jamie knew. She had been waiting for what seemed like weeks for her brothers' reply to her letter. Perhaps they didn't feel they should reply? Jamie thought for sure they would though, even if she didn't say to in her letter. They weren't supposed to use paper, but Ladie could have easily gotten them some, she thought. It was possible, though, that Ladie hadn't been around. No matter how many plausible explanations she came up with for why they hadn't replied, she was still quite anxious. It was now October and there was still no reply.

_I didn't think Enjore liked Quidditch._

She shrugged. "The boys convinced her it would be fun. Besides, I wouldn't know that. I've never talked to Enjore aside from a 'good morning' or 'hello' every once in a while."

_But, you two are in the same dorm._ Jamie would've thought that the girls conversed as much in their dorm as the boys did in theirs. Mostly, though, the male conversations were involving rival Quidditch teams which she knew nothing about. She still hadn't been allowed to enter the girl's sleeping quarters for some reason. She thought it peculiar that each time she neared to talk to Enjore, she was yelled at and called a pervert by one of the prefects while the boys would laugh. She didn't understand. After the first week, though, she stopped trying to go in.

"Enjore never really talks to anyone when she's near a cushion, if you know what I mean. The girl seriously has a sleep disorder, and not the kind that prohibits dreams. I don't know why she's so tired all the time, but I feel like she wanders the corridors at night, or something, so she has to make up for lost rest whenever she gets the chance." Jamie knew what she meant. She had never seen a person sleep as much as Enjore, but on the train, when Enjore wasn't asleep, she seemed to go into an odd twitching fit. She wondered if that had something to do with it.

As the daily owls flew in, dropping mail in the laps of several students, a brown owl flapped lamely, shabbier than ever, slowly making its way through drops and recoveries down the Ravenclaw table. People gawked at it from below, staring as it collapsed in mid-air, directly above Jamie. She caught the large ball of feathers in a quick reflex, not quite expecting the anti-majestic landing despite its lowly entry. Stroking the fragile creature that lay in her arms, she noticed a black letter addressed to her in pearly ink and extremely scribbled handwriting, as if someone had written it in a hurry. She had never seen such a thing before. She slipped the letter into her pocket as people ran over and examined the beaten owl. Its wings looked as if they had been messily clipped and dried blood caked part of its chest in a patch of brown scab. Jamie tenderly cleaned leaves, small twigs, and dirt out of its feathers as it nibbled a treat a fourth year came over with.

The fourth year offered to take the owl to the hospital wing since she was headed in that direction anyway to meet a friend after breakfast. Jamie complied, handing the shaken owl over and turned to her letter. Who wrote in white ink on black paper? Weren't the colors supposed to be reversed? Upon opening, she found the letter to be blank. That was noteworthy. Why would someone address a letter to her and then write nothing?

Jamie took out her wand. _Aperecium_, she thought. Nothing happened. It truly was just a blank letter.

She returned the letter to her pocket, planning to examine it further later on when she looked to see the food on her plate missing. Nargles. No one really knew what was happening, but the school seemed to be plagued with something that enjoyed moving objects for the fun of it. Richard Darby had assured the students that there was nothing to worry about, he and the staff would get to the bottom of this mystery. So far, though, he had said nothing more than words of assurance. It couldn't have been any of the ghosts because they could be seen and could not preform magic. It was resolved that a living being was disrupting the peace. The only question was: what was it?

The paintings had been assigned the job of keeping a firm lookout for anyone or anything unusual roaming the halls of Hogwarts. Sir Cadogan had even been taken from his storage unit and placed in a hallway empty of paintings which happened to be on the way to Jamie's transfiguration class. It never failed, each time he saw her, he would profess his love and read her a new spout of poetry, challenging the Ravenclaw boys to a duel if he ever saw her walking with one of them. Roscoe seemed to enjoy egging the tiny figure on while people around her would laugh at the knight in heavy, glimmering armor trying to persuade Jamie to take the "ocular bulbs" off her head.

After finishing her breakfast off Diana's plate, Jamie made her way back to the common room, noticing Leo staring at Vannozza writing a report from across the room. What was so interesting about her, Jamie wondered, that he felt compelled to gaze at her with such hollow eyes? Was this like when Gregory stared at her over the summer at the gate? Vannozza certainly didn't have a veela enchantment, so why did Leo seem drawn to her? Jamie intended to understand why people did such strange things to one another eventually. Never had her brothers ever displayed affection for her like the siblings did here, joking with one another, hugging goodnight. Only her mother had ever showed them what love was, staying by Nathan's bedside when he was sick, comforting Jamie when she used to cry as a younger child. What did it mean to have someone who wasn't your mother show you affection like that?

Jamie sighed and stared out the window at the Quidditch tryouts. It was a nice day. About time she found that entrance to the roof.

Jamie was smart enough to know that the first place she ought to look was in the library. It was fairly easy to find book which displayed the various wings of Hogwarts, but she quickly discovered that the school was so large; much of it had not been thoroughly mapped out despite its age. Its age was actually a contributing factor. The book was not brand new and Hogwarts had changed over the years. For example, there was an attic labeled "Divination Classroom," but divination had not been provided as a class for over half a century.

Jamie searched the top floor in the book for any leads, but the safest known entry point to the roof involved climbing a stone gargoyle and she wasn't too keen on risking her life a second time on that roof. Jamie resolved that the Ravenclaw Hellions must've had a secret entrance unknown to the students. Giving up, Jamie began to head back to her common room until a cold, lone existence swept past her. She looked back to a translucent young woman in a dress. The Grey Lady! In the month she'd been here, she'd met some of the friendlier ghosts like Peeves and Nearly-Headless Nick, but the Grey Lady liked to hide and swiftly ride away whenever crossing corridors.

She tried calling out to her instinctively, but was reminded that she had no voice to do such with, so she sprinted down the hall after the deiced woman, making as much noise as she could, banging her bag against the walls and stomping loudly as she ran to try and get her attention. The ghost did not seem to register her presence, paying Jamie no mind as she drifted down the corridor. _Wait!_ She thought frantically._ I need to talk to you!_

For the first time, Jamie felt extremely annoyed that she could not talk. Before, her lack of voice had simply been an impeding factor; an obstacle she needed to overcome. Jamie never talked much anyway on Alden Manor, but she now realized that a voice was sometimes essential. The Grey Lady stopped to gaze out the window at the mashed-potato clouds on a sea of air, moving in to block the butterball sun. Jamie stopped at the window, coughing on the saliva she had accidentally inhaled. The Grey Lady continued to look out the window, unconcerned by the first year that had been chasing after her.

_Please, ma'am, do you know if there is an entrance to the roof? _she wrote. The woman looked at her with eyes that were cold, yet soft. She seemed rather curious.

"Hit with a silencing charm, were you?"

Jamie shook her head. She had received over a dozen reverse silencing charms from teachers and students who she'd encountered over the past month, thinking it might be easier to keep sign on her forehead that said, _I'm mute_, so she would no longer have to write it out to ever person who found out. She wrote _I'm dumb_ to the woman who nodded in understanding, took one last glimpse out the window, and flew into the ceiling. No!

Jamie chased her up countless flights of stairs. For some reason, the Grey Lady would torment her by standing within view, waiting for her to regain her breath and then fly higher. Why was she doing this? Jamie thought she had been polite. If the woman did not know where the entrance was or did not wish to tell her, Jamie would have been content. Still, the more Jamie thought about it, the more she realized that she herself must've been the same way since she could not speak. Jamie often cut corners by not bothering to write where she was going to save time and disappear. She now knew how annoying that must've been, but the Grey Lady had a voice and was simply choosing not to use it!

Finally, after chasing the young (and at the same time, old) woman down a dark hallway and into an empty room, she stopped. The Grey Lady floated in the room for a moment, waiting, once again for Jamie' breathing to go normal. "I only do this because a great man one said, 'help will always be given to those at Hogwarts who ask for it.'" Jamie had no idea who she was talking about, but was grateful that the lady had stopped retreating. The woman left. At first, Jamie was going to give chase, but reminded herself how tired she was and thought about what the woman had said. "I only do this…" What had she done? Led her to the roof entrance? Looking around her, Jamie could only see an empty classroom with a few stacked chairs and portraits around the walls.

"Psst." What was that? "Psssst. Hey! Over here!" Jamie turned to a painting of a nobleman hung on the left wall. "Do you mind returning me to my rightful place? I was just staring out the window at the lovely weather we'd been having a few days ago and, to my surprise, I was switched with the werewolf."

"Owooooooooooooooooooooooooo!" A picture on the wall opposing the window howled.

"You see, I was quite fascinated by it at first. It is quite intriguing to be in a new spot, but I'm afraid that it's gotten old. My main source of entertainment came from the window and I can't manage to see it from this angle. I think we would both enjoy being back in our rightful places, seeing as the full moon does get him a bit annoyed. Would you mind switching us back?" Jamie nodded. Was this why the ghost of Ravenclaw House had led her up here? Something told her the answer to that was a no. Removing the picture of the werewolf, she dropped it as soon as she saw what lied behind it. It howled, but she wasn't listening. There was a hole behind the painting with stairs leading into darkness. She abandoned the painting and began to ascend. "Excuse me! I thought you were helping us! Oh! How rude!"

The stairs weren't very high. They curved around a pole in the center of a cylinder-like structure, only about a meter wide until she found a wooden hatch she pushed and banged at with her hands to no avail. Finally, she took out her wand, closed her eyes and concentrated with all her might on the spell "alohamora." There was a click, like the scraping of metal upon metal, and she swung the hatch open easily. That was the first time she'd succeeded on a spell in one try! Above the hatch was a cone-like ceiling above her, filled with wasp and bird nests due to the gaping hole cut in the side of the cone.

Through the hole, she could see a small, blonde boy looking out over the horizon, deep in thought. She didn't want to disturb him, but she had spent so much time looking for this place that she couldn't help, but want to look around a bit. Peering down, there was a safe one meter jump down to a roof of rock almost identical to the one she had slept on her first night. She could actually see that same flat from where she sat. As soon as Jamie jumped down, the boy bolted around, wand in hand. Jamie froze and so did he. It was Tyler. Apparently, he did not choose to attend Quidditch tryouts. She was surprised because he seemed to be just as into Quidditch as the other boys.

He relaxed a bit. "Oh, it's j-j-just you." He pocketed his wand. "D-d-did you follow m-m-me here?" Jamie shook her head. "Then how d-did you find it?"

_Grey Lady_

"Oh."

_How did you?_

"I d-d-didn' m-m-mother t-told me about this p-p-place w-when I w-was young. She used to c-c-come here w-w-with m-my father. W-why d-d-did you w-want to c-come here?"

_To see the sunset from the roof._

He smiled, "You're so w-weird." Jamie thought this was a bit odd coming from a boy with a stutter. Jamie walked over to him and sat down with him on the stone ceiling. They were in silence for a while. Jamie wasn't sure what to say. She didn't expect to find anyone on the roof. "W-w-w-w—Ugh!" His sudden outburst made Jamie jump. "I'm sorry. I j-j-just c-can't help m-my stutter sometimes. It d-d-drives m-me c-c-crazy!" He looked up at her. "You d-d-don't know how lucky you are to have n-no voice. No one ever gets offended w-when you say something '-'c-c-c-cause you c-c-can't and you d-d-don't m-mess up your w-w-words. I c-c-can't even say spells properly."

_I say all of my spells mentally. At least you have a voice, even if it is infested with issues._

"I w-w-wish w-we c-c-could trade places," he stammered longingly.

"Mmmmm." She sighed. Wait. Her voice! It was back! "M-m-my voice is b-b-back!" Wait. That wasn't right. Why did she have a stammer? Tyler opened his mouth to speak his surprise, but choked.


	9. The Ravenclaw Hellions

Chapter 9-The Ravenclaw Hellions

They stared at each other wide eyed. _The nargles switched our voices!_ Jamie wasn't sure if she completely believed the nargle theory, but it was all they had for now and she agreed that whatever had been switching objects in the school was responsible, so she nodded, not used to having a voice to talk with.

"This is w-w-weird," she said. "I w-w-wonder if it'll reverse on its own like some of the b-b-brooms d-d-did." Tyler was right. The stutter was annoying.

He smiled at her, looking rather victorious for a moment, but Jamie could hardly tell why. He didn't have a voice! "W-w-we should go get help."

_From whom?_

Jamie knew that anyone else could've been just as helpful, but the first person she thought of was the person who had always been around to instruct since she got to Hogwarts. "Vannozza."

"Jamie, your voice is…higher than I expected. Perhaps that's just because you're young…or maybe it's the stutter."

"B-b-but d-d-do you know how to switch it b-b-back?"

She smiled. "I'm flattered, but I think you're giving me a little more credit than I deserve. I've never seen anything quite like this, but I agree that asking your professors might not prove to much avail." Jamie sighed. She knew it was a long shot that Vannozza knew anything, but she always seemed so insightful, Jamie hoped she might be able to help.

"W-w-well, thanks anyw-w-way." They turned to leave.

"Wait." Jamie looked back at her. "I said that _your_ professors wouldn't be helpful, I never said anything about _my _professors."

"She's brilliant, really," Vannozza said as they climbed to the fifth floor. "I can't believe she only teaches school. She could really be a lot of use in the ministry. Here it is." Vannozza opened a door and the three were led into what appeared to be an underwater tank. Fish swam against the wall as if they were living, moving wall paper; seaweed grew in holographic likeness from the edges of windows and the floor. "Porfessor, it's magnificent!"

"Oh, Vannozza, you're too nice, really," blushed a tiny woman in the back of the room. Thick, wiry greys stood in all directions on her head, only pushed back behind her ears by her box-shaped glasses. "I simply applied a muggle technique of image projection through magic by taking a memory of mine from when I went scuba diving with my husband back in my youthful days. See? There he is!" Jamie turned to where the woman was pointing as a suit of black swam by. Turning toward the children, Jamie could see his deep blue eyes. The woman sighed, "I learned about muggles mostly from him, you know. He was one himself while I was raised in a wizarding family. I might not be a muggle studies teacher today were it not for him." She beamed at Vannozza. "But, you did not come here just to hear me ramble on! Oh! And I see you've brought two young ones with you as well! Come in, come in."

"Well, you see, Professor. Everything in the school keeps switching."

"Yes, yes, my dear. I have yet to find my underpants. Those nargles appear to think I enjoy wearing men's undergarments."

Vannozza giggled. "You believe they're nargles?"

"Well, to tell you the truth, I not sure what they are, but it's much easier to put a face to the name."

"Yes." Vannozza began to explain how Jamie was mute and Tyler had a stutter, but the two had suddenly been switched.

"Hmmm. That does sound rather fascinating. No one knows much about these nargles, but I'm afraid I specialize in muggles, not magical creatures."

"I know, professor, but I was hoping you might know some form of muggle magic that could get rid of it."

The woman chuckled. "Muggle magic is called science, my dear. They specialize in figuring out how the world turns without magic, which is something not many wizards have come to appreciate as I have. I understand Miss. Misra has taken an interest in such as well." Wasn't Misra Enjore's last name?

"I've got it!" A first year pranced out of a back door. "I know what to do!"

"Billie, I told you to wait in my office."

Billie leaned against the woman's desk. "Alright, alright, I got cha, but I think I know what to do, or at least, Oofles does." At that moment, a lump in the girl's robes Jamie hadn't caught before moved up the girl's chest until a white, fuzzy face with red eyes poked out of her collar. The girl who ad jumped her on the train! "He can smell them everywhere and they certainly aren't nargles."

The professor poked her glasses further up her scrawny nose. "You're sure, Billy?"

"Professor," she said smugly as the ferret ran down her arm. "I was put in Ravenclaw for a reason."

After catching Enjore, Rush, Roscoe, and Francis coming out of Ravenclaw Quidditch tryouts, Vannozza briefed them on the situation. "We're going nargle hunting!" Billie proclaimed. "Well, sort of."

"Wait, so if you two switched voices, then why isn't Jamie speaking?" Enjore asked.

_Jamie still has the stutter_. Tyler wrote. _It can get annoying to talk_. Jamie nodded in agreement. She was used to keeping quiet, anyway.

"What do you mean, sort of?" Roscoe asked Billie. "I thought we were hunting nargles here!"

"If I'm not mistaken, Roscoe, you were the one who originally said that nargles weren't real," Billie reminded him. "We still have no proof that that's what they are, but Oofles claims the scent is familiar. He just can't pinpoint what it is."

"Yes…about the ferret. How exactly do you know that this is what he's saying. I 'm not trying to call you thick, but…people can make up things that their pets 'say'."

"Roscoe, Oofles is not my pet, he's my familiar and we need to get down to business. Do we all understand the plan?" The group nodded. "Alright, then, let's head out!"

"Where's the Professor and Vannozza?" Enjore asked Tyler as they followed Oofles down a flight of stairs, his nose sniffing the floor and walls.

_Informing the headmaster_

"OKAY, EVERYONE! SET UP A PERIMETER!" She hollered as they entered the dungeons and Oofles climbed up her leg.

"Merlin, Billie, you don't need to shout. We're standing right next to you," Francis said, annoyed. Jamie and Tyler jogged to opposing ends of the empty dungeon chambers, Francis stood on the stairs leading up while Roscoe was on the ones going down. Enjore and Rush were bait, holding their wands to each other as if in a duel. Nothing happened.

"Er…Are you sure this is going to work?" Roscoe asked Billie.

"Oofles verified that the unusual scent was coming from this point."

"I know, but…it is a ferret…"

"It is NOT a ferret! It's Oofles!"

"Who is a ferret."

"Who is the familiar of the Great Billie Phillips!"

"Let's not go too far with the self-encouragement."

"Sorry to disrupt this gripping conversation," Rush said impatiently, "but why the bloody hell isn't this working?"

"Perhaps they speak our language and know what we're up to," Francis suggested.

"Well," Bill said in a slightly annoyed voice. "If they speak our language, don't let them know what's going on, you moron!"

"Er…moron? Is that a muggle word.?"

"No. American. Wait. They seriously don't say moron here?"

"I've never heard it."

"They say it," Enjore settled.

"HELLO!" Rush shouted.

"Hmmm…Maybe you two should actually try dueling," Billie suggested.

"How is that going to help?" Rush asked. Billie shrugged.

"I like the idea," Roscoe agreed.

Billie smirked, "It's settled, then. DUEL!" The room was silent. "Why aren't you guys dueling?"

"Err…" Enjore started. "We've only been in school for a month…"

"…so we only know really lame spells," Rush finished for her.

"Basically."

"Well, just use those," Billie said, "but make it look like it's really intense. They won't be able to tell the difference."

"This is a lot of information coming from someone who knows nothing about what we're trying to catch," Roscoe intervened skeptically.

"Don't say 'catch'!" Billie dropped her voice to a whisper. "They might speak our language."

"This is ridiculous."

"Er…AGUAMENTI!" Enjore shouted, soaking Rush.

"Thanks," he said sarcastically.

"We're supposed to be dueling."

"And I've got wet underpants, now. Well played."

"RUSH!"

"Oh, alright." Rush put on a truly intense face as if he were in a life-or-death duel and shouted "WINGARDIUM LIVEOSA!" Enjore's robes floated off her head, so she only wearing her trainer.

"You perv!"

"I was aiming for your bag!"

"LUMOS MAXIMA!"

"REPAIRO!"

"Repairo? What was that supposed to do? Fix the hole in my trainer? Thanks."

"Oh, shut it!"

"RISIUM!"

Light flashed back and forth as Jamie witnessed her first duel and it wasn't much to see. Much of the time, the two would repeat spells the other had said, or Roscoe, Francis, or Billie would shout a spell they hadn't tried yet. It looked utterly ridiculous to Jamie considering none of the spells actually harmed either of them, just made them look a bit foolish or missed completely. Jamie found herself ducking from several spells Rush had meant to plant on Enjore.

Suddenly, Enjore shouted, "ATTONITUS!" and found a stream of light jutting out of Rush's wand toward herself. She fell against the ground, apparently dizzy with visible stars circling her head. The spell had switch wands!

"DECEPTUS!" The group lining the corridor called. Jamie simply called the spell mentally and was glad to see a stream of light issuing from her wand while Tyler, on the other end, was shutting his eyes tight without a reaction. A blue dome of light surrounded the corridor, holding Enjore and Rush captive inside. Suddenly, two tiny, chubby figures, about six inches high appeared on either side on Enjore and Rush, glowing the same blue as the dome.

"Who are you?" Rush asked one of the shaking blue creatures.

"Ahem," came a squeaky voice. "I am Fifer and this is my sister, Piper."

The opposite figure nodded. "Fifer, we have been caught. What are we to do?"

"As our leader once said, Piper, the truth can be the best lie."

She nodded and squeaked, "We are the Bewitched Gnomes of Hogwarts. Also known, by your kind, as the Ravenclaw Hellions."


	10. Bewitched Gnomes

Chapter 10-Bewitched Gnomes

Enjore started laughing immediately. "YOU'RE the Ravenclaw Hellons?! Oh, that's just too perfect! Rush, now that I think about, I think I would like to join the brotherhood!"

Rush scowled. "Please tell me you're joking," he said, disappointment creeping into his voice as Enjore tried to breathe while howling.

The blue figures shook their head and slowly began to turn a brownish color which must've been how they naturally looked. Both of them stared at each other in awe. Then, Fifer spoke. "Long ago, the Bewitched Gnomes of Hogwarts used to simply be the Gnomes of Alden." A shock drove up Jamie's spine as she recognized the name. "We lived a simple life on a manor, below the gardens. Each day we would get up and pick the food we needed. We were considered pests, though, and driven out monthly. No matter, we would always return to our home and wait for a the same eventual process." Jamie remembered going through the garden and looking for holes that led to an elaborate tunnel system below the ground. She now realized that those tunnels must've belonged to the Gnomes.

"One day, everything changed," Fifer continued. "A small girl with blonde hair would often do the weeding and pushed us out each month. One day, she came along with one of your wands, calling it a stick of magic. She began making sparks with it, waving the thing in the air. Gnomes are naturally curious, so we all came above ground to see what was going on. I suppose she had planned this because the tiny girl used it to put a form of enchantment on us I'd never recognized. She looked to only be a little older than you lot. I doubt she knew what she was doing. A few minutes after we were hit, a man wearing long black robes and a pointed cap took her away from the garden."

"It must've been a ministry employee," Frances reasoned. "If she was older than us, then she most certainly wasn't allowed to use magic outside school."

"But, you see, I've become familiar with your ways after living here for so long and I know you all stay here for ten months out of the year. She was there each and every day."

"That doesn't make sense," Enjore interrupted. "She could only use that wand if she was a witch and, unless she wasn't allowed to go to school at Hogwarts, she should've been here."

He nodded. "My reasoning exactly. At the time, we were shocked by the enchantment. Each and every one of us was banished from the yard with no hope of returning to our home. We needed to find a wizard home, for we can only live amongst magic, so we traveled for miles until we found a wizard home right down the road. For a while, we were content with living there until we found that we could use magic! Simple magic, of course. Nothing as advanced as what witches and wizard use, but we found that the more wizards that were in the house at one time, the stronger our magic became."

"You were feeding off their magic?" Enjore questioned.

"I'm not so sure I would say 'feeding off of it.' We had our own magic, it was just that the presence of wizards made it strong enough for us to use in ways we had never imagined possible!"

"Hey, I've got Gnomes living at my house," Roscoe said. "And none of them seem to have a quarter of your intelligence."

The gnome nodded. "Indeed. That was an additional result of the enchantment. The longer we used our enhanced powers, the more we were able to think clearly, pick up the human language, and figure out spells of our own. We all felt as if we had been transformed from barbarians into scholars!

"We learned quite a bit from this wizarding family. No longer were we ignorant, but paid attention to each thing they said, discovering that we could turn invisible and eavesdrop on their conversations. The wizarding world seemed intriguing, indeed, but the most interesting was the fact that their oldest child, a female, was to be attending Hogwarts. The more we heard about this place, the more it seemed like a paradise. A school full of hundreds of witches and wizards to enhance our power while we sat in classes and listened to all the information these professors gave away for free! We deducted a plan which was for each of us to hide in various places in the car, luggage, and the wizards' clothing while we rode to London and found our way onto the train at King's Cross. Even on the train, we felt our powers increasing exponentially. Oh, how exciting it was! Finally, we made our way into Hogwarts and found that we were permanently invisible!"

"The original founders put countless spells on this place." Enjore disclosed. "One of them could've reacted with the enchantment that girl put on you, making you permanently invisible."

"And trapped as well. We found that we could not leave the premises. Nonetheless, this did not bother us. Gnomes prefer to stay in a singular home for much of their lives. Moving twice was such a steep adventure for some that many Gnomes lost their lives from the shock."

"Poor Errol," Piper said, staring at the floor sadly.

"Yes. As well as magic and intelligence, we found a new emotion from the enchantment: love. We discovered that when other gnomes died, we became sorrowful as if a piece of us had been taken. We had never before experienced such a strong emotion as gnomes are used to living simple lives. Still, we desire to keep this emotion and will teach it to our children for generations to come!" Jamie thought about how only her mother had ever shown her love, but wondered if she loved her brothers. Did she? She still wasn't completely sure what love was and wanted desperately to find out.

"How long ago did you come to Hogwarts?" Enjore inquired.

"Alas, since Septemper, it has been five years."

"That's around the time the Ravenclaw Hellions appeared," Francis estimated.

"No wonder no one's ever been able to figure out who they are or catch them in the act," Rush said, amazed. "They're invisible and not even students!"

Fifer nodded.

"Wait," Enjore said. "We understand how you got here and operate, but why do you cause mischief?"

"And why have you been switching things in the school for the past month?" Francis added.

Roscoe jumped in, "And why are all of your pranks limited to the Ravenclaws?"

Fifer looked to Piper uneasily. "When September came and all of the students arrived, one of our gnome brethren wandered off while the students came. When he returned, we found that he was slowly returning to his original gnome state and we could finally see what we were once like. He was angry and gruff, insulting everyone around him until he could no longer speak except in grunts. His magic became limited and eventually returned to an Alden Gnome after only a day. With this new emotion, everyone was concerned. We found that whoever touched him returned to normal as well. He was banned from the garden, but we found that it was difficult to tell which gnomes had it in the starting stages. Before long, over half of the Hogwarts Gnomes had become Alden Gnomes. Over the years, our numbers had increased to a whopping seventy-five gnomes. Only thirty-nine of us remain bewitched."

"That sill doesn't explain why you've been switching everything," Frances pressed.

"We knew that our only hope was to ask the wizards of the school for assistance, but many of us were at an impasse. Some thought that we would be thrown out of our home at the school like we had so many times before at Alden Manor. We were afraid they would not help us, but I convinced our brethren that we, at least, needed to try."

"So, why didn't you just talk to us?"

"Alas, we couldn't! Our permanent invisibility spell and small voices made it nearly impossible to communicate with the school's professors. We had resolved to talk to the headmaster, but found his office locked and the other teachers constantly too preoccupied to pay us any mind. Finally, we resolved that we needed to get the attention of someone somehow and began using the magic we were best at: switching objects. Piper, of course, preformed that excellent display with the broomsticks over three weeks ago, for she is the only one of our kind skilled enough with telepathy to do so."

Piper sighed, "It drained so much energy from me that I just woke this morning from a deep sleep."

"Why didn't you just write us a message?"

"Alas, we don't know how," he said, ashamed. "The classes here do not teach how to communicate through writing and, therefore, we have not been able to learn. It seems to be a natural-born talent for humans."

"So, this entire time, you've just been trying to get our attention?"

Fifer nodded. "Each time we switched something, a gnome was always close at hand, attempting communication, but our voices are so small in your crowded hallways, only when we switched something while a person was alone would we be able to generate a reaction."

Tyler suddenly jumped up pointing to himself. "Do you mind switching their voices back?" Enjore asked kindly.

"My dear, it would be my pleasure. Piper?"

"Ready." The two clapped their hands simultaneously and Jamie choked when she tried to speak. Her voice was gone again!

"You're the ones I heard w-w-when I w-went to b-b-bed at night," Tyler stuttered.

The gnome nodded his head. "We had no idea what a nargle was, so we assumed that it was what students of Hogwarts called gnomes. Each time we were around you when you tried convincing them we were here, our hopes were diminished as no one believed you. We also were tracking the one you call Jamie." Jamie's eyes widened as Fifer turned to her. They had been watching her? "You see, we observed you looking through the book of Hogwarts and thought you might be looking for a suitable location for where we lived. This gave us the idea that you, also, had heard our cries, but could not communicate because of your lack of voice. When a colleague of ours was about to speak with the one you call Tyler on the roof today, he noted you entering and decided to take the opportunity to switch Tyler's stuttering voice with Jamie's lack of one to see if Jamie would tell people that Tyler was, indeed, correct about the nargles. We find your methods unusual, but effective, especially since we are now visible."

"Only under the shield," Billie said. "It was my idea. My parents created this spell, you know. It traps things and returns whatever may be hiding to its original state. It was originally made for catching werewolves and animaguses, but I figured it would work on you two."

"It was an ingenious assumption to which we gnomes applaud."

Billie smiled and said sarcastically, "You know, I'm just an average Ravenclaw with mad deciphering abilities. Nothing to applaud, really." The group of first years rolled their eyes.

Francis ran to fetch the headmaster, seeing as the rest of the group could not get past the shield to access the exit, and returned with the muggle studies teacher, Vannozza, Chase Douglas, and Richard Darby. The Fifer repeated his story. All the while, Francis, Billie, Roscoe, Rush, and Enjore added things in like "And that's how they got here!" or "It was Piper who did the broom bit." They left out the part about the gnomes being the Ravenclaw Hellions. Enjore had advised them it would only put them on thin ice with the headmaster to know all of the mischief they had caused over the years through practicing their spells on Ravenclaws and Fifer promised that, at a later date, it would all be explained. The headmaster, Professor Darby, was instructed by Professor Douglas that it might be wise to trust their newest friends considering they had done no real damage in switching things.

Sure enough, the Bewitched Gnomes of Hogwarts's story checked out. By the greenhouses lived the Bewitched Gnomes which had set up a complex system of gardening that had baffled the Herbology professor for the past five years while the regular gnomes had been infesting the flower garden of Professor Townsend down by the hut near the Forbidden Forest. After capturing all of the plagued gnomes, they were died a temporary bright green color, so they would be able to be seen while Irwin and Professor Young, the Transfiguration professor, figured out what had happened.

Under the Bewitched Gnomes' requests, a few of them were taken to figure out what spell was on Hogwarts that kept them from turning back to normal, because, though being invisible was an advantage, it was also a disadvantage because they could not see one another. It was eventually found by Professor Wilcox that the gnomes had not reacted with a school enchantment after all, but had simply started eating a food unknown to them when they entered Hogwarts: mandrake root. Since the gnomes burrowed underground to make their homes, they immediately started eating these roots upon arrival at the school five years ago. Taken out of their diets, not only could the gnomes be seen on command, but they could leave the gates of Hogwarts. Not that any of them wanted to. They had finally found a place to call home which they were not thrown out of each month.

The Bewitched Gnomes were kindly asked to stay outside the school unless otherwise instructed and they immediately complied for many of them had nearly been crushed over the past month, when they were invisible, from students charging down the hall. In all, life improved greatly for the gnomes although many of them disliked that they could no long eat mandrake root which they all regarded as highly delicious.

Jamie was assigned the job of taking Fifer and Piper back to their greenhouse garden while the others caught the plagued gnomes. Rings were put around their wrists so Jamie could tell where they were and the force field was taken down, leaving two floating rings. When Jamie was sure the others had gone, Jamie wrote that she had something to ask them before their departure. "My dear …we can't read," Fifer said awkwardly. That was right! Jamie had completely forgotten! How would she communicate if not through her board? They certainly didn't know SEE.

"It is alright, Dear," Piper said. "In addition to telepathy, if I reach out, I can sense what you wish to say. The action simply tires me, so I do not usually conduct it. In your case, I will make an exception. Simply think what you may."

Jamie nodded, utterly amazed. She thought as if she were saying a spell. _How many years ago were you bewitched?_

Piper looked woozy. "A worthy question," she squeaked. "We came to Hogwarts nine years ago, but stayed at the previous wizarding home for four years, meaning that we were bewitched roughly nine years ago." Jamie sighed. Nine years ago, Ladie would have been twelve.


	11. The Mirror

**AN: A bit of a filler, but I wanted to put this in here. You can skip if you want, but if you enjoy Jamie's inner search, then please proceed.**

Chapter 11-The Mirror

Over the month of October, Jamie had enjoyed getting to bed early, so she could wake up and enjoy the sunrise. It always seemed more beautiful the following day, with red and orange leaves floating past or the waves creatures of the lake made distorting it's the bright colors. Occasionally, she'd come up at sunset as well to find Tyler taking in the fresh air of the day in the spot she normally sat at. Not wanting to be rude, she would leave without making a sound before he knew she was there in case he didn't want to be disturbed. The sunrise was always a part of the day that belonged to her; a time when she could sit by herself and mindlessly watch the colors as her eyes opened a little bit wider and her joints loosened a little more in the passing minutes. She didn't want to take Tyler's time away from him.

Sometimes, he wouldn't be at lunch and the boys and Enjore would wonder if he'd gotten another detention, but Jamie knew where he was. Up above the bustling of students, getting to classes, he was relaxing on the roof, eating lunch or studying, silently hoping that one day his stutter would disappear.

After the gnome incident, Diana, surprisingly, offered to teach the Bewitched Gnomes how to read, so she could often be seen over the month of October with a book in hand while stout, grubby creatures climbed all over her. She appeared to be thoroughly enjoying herself. "I just love it!" she told Jamie the week of Halloween. "It gives me something to do after my classes besides studying. It makes me feel important, you know?" Jamie nodded. For some reason, many people who knew about her condition would pour their heat out to her about people they fancied, their grades, how they felt about how someone acted toward them. Jamie wasn't yet sure whether or not she liked this. It was nice that people trusted her, but she knew that it was only because they could say whatever they wanted and she wouldn't tell people their secrets, not because they liked her. Or did they like her because of that? Jamie was still rather confused about love.

As she was preparing for bed one day, Roscoe came into the room and announced. "Alright, guys. I've finally persuaded them to get us a new mirror." Jamie stared at him for a moment, wondering what he meant. She had only ever been in the bathroom by the boy's dormitories. Other people told her stories of a ghost girl screaming in the bathrooms of the hallways. Jamie knew about Moaning Myrtle from her mother's stories, but she had always sounded comical in those, never scary. Whenever Jamie passed the bathroom she haunted, she could either hear someone crying or a toilet endlessly flushing which made Jamie a bit anxious. It was said that Myrtle visited other bathrooms of the school, so she always steered clear of them.

Jamie was puzzled at Roscoe's announcement because she didn't think anything was wrong with the mirror. The first week of school, when Jamie first used the Ravenclaw boys' bathroom, she'd stepped out of the toilet to face a shiny, reflective surface with a disgusting goblin staring her in the face. It gave such a shock, she ran up the stairs in a flurry, eyes wide in terror. "Oh, muggle borns," Roscoe had chuckled. "I assume this is the first time you've encountered the enchanted mirror?" Whatever a mirror was, Jamie nodded in agreement. "Yes, well, it's been there for a few decades. A student was practicing a spell in front of the mirror and it just, sort of, backfired. Now, every time you look in it, all you see is a disgusting monster version of yourself."

Rush sniggered, adding in, "Of course, in Roscoe's case, it really is just his reflection."

"Hey, speak for yourself. The uglier the fiend, the more attractive the bloke."

"Whatever helps you sleep at night, mate."

Jamie assumed that all mirrors displayed the ugly version of you. She had never encountered a mirror before, so she had no idea what a mirror was really supposed to do. "Don't tell me they're getting rid of the old one?!" Rush said, heartbroken.

"No, no, they're going to stock it away with Sir Cadogan now that the school doesn't need either. I have to admit, I'm quite excited."

"Don't wet your pants, now," Rush joked.

"Don't you realize what they've done?" Francis said. "They've released a monster!"

"Merlin, you're right! The beauty queen will be staring at himself all day, now!"

"Quick, we better inform the teachers that they'll be missing a student."

"Would you two cut it out?" Roscoe said to the laughing boys, smirking a bit himself. "I've done us all a favor."

"Favor to your egotism," Rush jested.

Jamie was interested. _Is it here now?_ She wrote.

"No," Roscoe replied. "They're going to put it in during the night. Said they don't want any of us fooling around during the day, making it hard to put in."

Rush gave a look of satirical shock. "I can't believe they would accuse us of such skullduggery!"

Francis jumped in, "We would never!" Jamie found the boys staring at her as she laughed silently. "Wow. When you say mute you really mean mute. A soundless laugh. Now, who would've thought?"

Jamie awoke early that morning, brushing her hair with an old comb Rush had given her once he saw her messy hair. Rush also lent her an interesting thing he called shampoo which made your hair smell lovely, like freshly picked apples. Jamie slipped on her shoes and tiptoed in the dark, down the hallway and out of the boy's corridor, but paused upon see the glint of the mirror in the boys' bathroom. Roscoe had said that it was going to be replaced with a regular mirror during the night. Was it there now?

Curious, Jamie stepped into the bathroom and turned on the light, temporarily stinging her eyes. Once she adjusted, in the mirror, she saw a short, skinny figure wearing Hogwarts robes who looked to be about eleven. He had combed short, shaggy brown hair in a bowl cut and auburn eyes distorted by the thick, round glasses he wore. Upon seeing the figure, Jamie was not sure what to think. It certainly was not a monster. Moving her hand up and down, she found that the boy in the mirror mimicked her every move as if he could read her mind and knew exactly what Jamie was about to do. Jamie took her glasses off and discovered that the boy in the mirror was a girl, beautiful in every way. The way her cheeks filled and nose curved was perfect. Upon seeing the girl, Jamie knew instinctively that it was herself. She was pretty. Now, she knew what Gregory saw when he looked at her at the gate during the summer.

Jamie stared at herself for what seemed like a lifetime. Never had she ever seen herself before. She now realized that she looked like Ben. While Nathan and Tony had dirty-blonde hair and eyes like her mother, Ben had always told her that he took after their father. That must've meant that Jamie did too. She smiled as she pointed out to herself that her mother's left eyebrow had had the same slice of missing hair as she did and Jamie's ears were attached to the side of her head like her mother and Ben's while Nathan and Tony's ear lobes hung freely from the sides of their head.

Eventually, Jamie saw bright sunlight streaking through the window skipping and rebounding over misty floor tiles. She had missed the sunset, but didn't care. At eleven years, she finally knew what she looked like.

_Piper_, Jamie thought at the greenhouses after Herbology when the others had left. She had lunch right after, so she wasn't worried about being late. _What is love? Fifer said it made you feel worry and sadness, but those aren't good feelings. Why would you want to teach that to your children_? Jamie still didn't understand love and was hoping that the gnomes would understand since they, also, had once lived their lives without it.

"My dear," Piper started. "Worry and sadness are simply the toll we take to obtain what we truly desire. Love can hardly be explained in words, but it is not only composed of the bad things. It is a mixture of intense emotion that drives the being of humans and, now, us Hogwarts Gnomes. It is like eating a fruit for its delicious taste, knowing that there will be the occasional seed which you must swallow despite its scratch as it travels down your throat."

Jamie frowned. _I still don't understand._

"When I was younger and saw the way people at the wizarding family treated each other, I did not understand, either. It took me until I found my mate, Caspar, to understand what the words 'I love you' truly meant."

_In Hogwarts, siblings say they love each other as well. Do you love Fifer?_

"Alas, I have seven brothers with whom I grew to love, but it seemed harder to love them than my mate, for I would always toil with them so, but I realized when I lost two of them to the Plague, I did indeed love each and every one of them. Perhaps it is loss that makes us realize what we have."

Jamie thought about Piper's words as she climbed the staircase to the roof, her burlap bag bouncing against her leg. She had missed the roof in the morning and wasn't too hungry anyway, so she skipped lunch and headed toward the storage classroom directly from the greenhouses. Piper seemed so wise for someone who had only been intelligent for nine years. Jamie had lived for eleven years was didn't seem as perceptive as her! Perhaps it was because of the enchantment, but Jamie knew that the ability to peek into the minds of others must've made her understand more than the other Bewitched Gnomes.

Jamie swung the door open and was surprised to see Tyler up here. Of course, she hadn't been to lunch, so she'd had no idea he'd skipped. Respecting his privacy, Jamie made to disappear back into the school when he called out to her. "Wait!" Tyler turned around. Jamie had noted Tyler stuttering on consonants b, c, d, j, m, w, and sometimes others. She was surprised to hear his voice clear, but it was short lived. "W-w-why are you ignoring m-m-me?"

Jamie sat on the edge of the structure, her legs dangling off the side, and took out her board. _I'm not ignoring you_, she wrote.

"Oh, yes you are. I hear you c-c-come sometimes w-w-when I'm up here, b-but leave w-w-when you see I'm here. W-w-what d-d-did I d-do?"

_Nothing. I just thought you wanted to be alone_, Jamie explained, shocked that he knew she was coming up here, and a little guilty that he'd thought she was avoiding him.

He smiled. "That's okay. I d-d-don't m-m-mind you b-b-being around. I j-just c-c-come up here to get away from people who m-m-make fun of m-me." Jamie slid off the edge of the staircase ceiling and landed firmly on the stone roof. She knew what it was like to not be able to use her voice properly…or at all. After all, just three weeks ago the two had been put in each other's shoes. Jamie took a seat in front of him, her board in her lap. "D-d-does m-my stutter b-b-bother you?"

_No_, she answered truthfully. _In all honesty, I don't quite grasp why you have it._

Tyler stared at the words. "Something I got and have alw-w-ways had. Parents say its b-b-because I'm so shy and I guess they're right, b-b-but I j-just get teased ab-b-bout it and the effect proliferates."

_I think you just need confidence._ Jamie wrote. _Don't think of what people will say when you stutter. Instead, don't think._ Jamie knew this wasn't particularly good advice, but could not think of anything else. She had never encountered someone with a stutter before. She wondered what Piper or Vannozza would say.

"I've tried that," Tyler said, suddenly annoyed without a hint of a stutter. "I can't do it! I know what's waiting for me when I go to school each day, every time I open my mouth. I took speech classes all through grade school, but none of them helped." Jamie thought for a moment. She couldn't help him in the way she wanted, but she did have an idea to take Tyler's mind off of his stutter. She stood up and extended her hand to him. "Where are we going?"

_The broom closet._


	12. Drag King

Chapter 12-Drag King

"B-b-but, w-why?" he asked as she dragged him down the flight of stairs. She didn't stop to take out her board and write out a response. He'd have his answer soon. Down the sets of staircases, out the door, and across the field until they reached the hut by the forbidden forest where Jamie knew the brooms were stored.

Jamie took out her wand. _Alohamora_, she thought to the lock. Nothing happened.

"There m-m-must b-be a spell to m-make sure students like us d-d-don't b-break in." Jamie took a rock from the ground and tossed it through the window, shattering it instantly. Now, how would she get up? "You're c-c-crazy, J-J-Jamie." She strut down to the vegetable patch where the Plagued Gnomes had been picked out and began to run, picking up speed. When she was a foot away from the hut, she placed the toe of her shoe on the stone and hoisted herself up enough to grab the edge of the window and clear away the broken glass. She swiftly tossed two Air Rug 2100s out the window and used a stool inside to hoist herself out, toppling to the ground. "B-b-brooms?"

_Repairo_, she thought and the glass swiftly flew back into place, looking brand new. _Up_, she thought firmly, providing enough of an example for Tyler that he caught on, summoning his broom to his hand and climbing on next to Jamie.

"W-w-we c-c-could get in trouble!" he said. Jamie disregarded him and flew off. She thought about how excited she had felt when she left Alden Manor without permission to chase her dream. Sitting up on the roof with you thoughts was great, but that wasn't what Tyler needed right now. He needed to _do _something. In their flying lessons they had only gotten to hovering above the ground and learning to control the broom. They would learn to actually fly later on, when they were better, but Jamie didn't think this could wait.

Jamie watched Tyler from a distance after she had blasted off and found him gingerly climbing through the air, making sure the broom was steady and completely under his control. After a few minutes though, he began gaining confidence, going a little bit faster, circling the Quidditch stadium closely behind Jamie. Soon, the two were circling each other, soaring high over the lake, letting the tips of their fingers brush the surface, and spraying the air with a delicate mist. Jamie dove close to the ground and spun between greenhouses, waving back to the Bewitched Gnomes as they harvested cherry tomatoes from their vegetable garden. Tyler burst through puffy cirrus clouds, beads of water forming on his face and hands from the humidity. This was the first time Jamie had seen ever seen Tyler smile and she liked it.

Once the pair saw students gathering in the courtyard, they assumed that lunch must be over and rushed to put the brooms away in the same manner they had received them, scampering into Transfiguration with little time to spare. "Where have you two been?" Enjore asked. "And, Tyler, why are you wet? Why are your faces red?" The two just smiled.

This was it: the first Ravenclaw Quidditch game of the year against Gyffindor. Halloween had passed uneventfully and Jamie could tell that many of the Ravenclaws had been waiting impatiently for this day from the constant complaining that Slytherin and Hufflepuff had already played a lousy match in October. Jamie wasn't sure how much she liked all of the noise around her, but she had to admit that it was quite thrilling to be amongst a crowd of people, all routing for the same team. She liked the thought of being part of many voices all chiming the same thing as if they were one.

Kelly O'Donnell, a fifth year Gryffindor was up at the microphone announcing a list of players' names, none of which Jamie had ever heard of, but it seemed that Enjore had. She would point out a face and say something like "He was terrible at tryouts. Don't know why they put him on the team." or "Oh, she was hilarious. Nearly fell off her broom trying to block a ball. Good keeper, though." Rush would either nod in agreement or challenge her on something she had said. They would bicker, and then get distracted by the game, one would say something, and the cycle would repeat. Jamie did notice that Enjore's face would twitch into a strained wink every now and then while everyone else was watching the game. She was reminded of the ride to Hogwarts when she saw her doing this for the first time and wondered why.

Francis and Roscoe were shouting at the other team, saying that they'd been cheating each time they scored a goal. No, no, that should have been a foul. Diana was trying to encourage the people behind her, Tyler included, to show a little more team spirit and holler, so their team could hear their encouragement. Jamie could hardly shout, so she was given a banner to hold up. She waved it enthusiastically.

The game progressed rapidly. Every time Kelly O'Donnell announced something, Billie would tell Jamie that he could have said it with more energy or feeling. Jamie got the impression that Billie wished to be the announcer for the Quidditch games and she didn't disagree. Billie had a spunky, happy-go-lucky personality that she liked, however, many people did not share those kind feelings toward her, Roscoe and Francis included. It seemed, though, that Francis would simply go along with whatever someone else said at the time, so he did not have much of personality of his own. Jamie wondered, if Roscoe and Rush and Enjore and Vannozza and even her own opinion were taken out of the mix, what would Francis think of Billie?

Jamie nearly hit several people by accident in the crowded stadium as she waved her banner with Ravenclaw pride. Her team was up ten points, but it would all be for nothing if the Ravenclaw seeker, Jessica Armstrong, did not manage to catch the golden snitch. Suddenly, two blue and red players were practically hugging as they sped down the field on their brooms, chasing a shining speck only a foot away from both of their outstretched hands. Almost there. Now only four inches. Come on! Catch it, Jessica!

At the same moment this was going on, not many people were paying attention to the other players on the field. Celestina Harper, one of the Gryffindor beaters, punched a ball directly into Franco Travis's spine, sliding him clean off his broom. He just so happened to fall directly above the golden snitch.

_Almost there!_ Jamie thought. _You can do it, Jessica!_ Just two inches away from the snitch! Suddenly, a blue, robed figure fell directly in front of the two seekers making them swivel in their spots and nearly fall of their brooms themselves. Luckily, Professor Townsend acted quickly and flicked her wand, so Franco landed softly on the ground. But, where was the golden snitch? It had disappeared in the flurry of Fraco's fall. Franco pried his face off the grass and touched his stomach, pulling something out of the folds of his robes with his clenched fist. The crowd stared intently, wondering what it was.

"Ladies and gentlemen," Kelly chimed, "Franco Travis has caught the golden snitch!" The Ravenclaws cheered while many of the other students wore confused faces. A chaser caught the snitch? They had never heard of this happening before. Was it legal? Professor Townsend also seemed to be at odds as players from opposite teams came to the ground and argued over what was to be done. The Ravenclaws said they caught it; therefore, it was their game. The Gryffindors countered, saying that the _seeker_ was meant to catch the snitch and no one else.

Professor Townsend examined the rulebook while Jamie heard Enjore talking about the rules of something called football which Jamie had never heard of before. Professor Townsend took Franco's hand and threw it high in the hair. Being a Gryffindor, Kelly O'Donnell didn't seem too happy about this decision. "Are you kidding me?! _Ravenclaw_ won?! Those little cheat—OUCH! CHILD ABUSE! Professor Douglas just hit me with a newspaper! Call the ministry aurors! Tell them to take this man away!"

An older boy next to Jamie was explaining to a group that if a player besides the seeker catches the ball, all of the points awarded by catching the golden snitch are taken away and the game is judged purely on number of points each team had before the snitch was caught. Since Ravenclaw was leading by ten points, they officially won the game. A few people grumbled at this, though because those lost points now put them in third place for the house cup. Jamie was ecstatic, though. They won!

Over half the people crowded out of the stadium while others waited in the stands for the traffic to shove off. Rush dragged the group to the Ravenclaw Quidditch team and joined the crowd holding Franco in the air while Jessica told others who had missed out on the action exactly what had happened. All the Ravenclaws and a few people from Hufflepuff and Slytherin were celebrating the victory while the Gryffindors laughed at their defeat and swore to crush the other team at their next game.

Enjore and Jamie lost Rush, Roscoe, and Francis, in the crowd, but Tyler and Diana stayed close at hand as the mob moved slowly toward the school. "Over here if you want to live!" Billie called from the changing rooms. The group of four complied, rushing into the empty changing rooms to get away from the noise. "SO INCREDIBLE! Did you see Franco swoop in and land on that snitch? And then Jessica and Jeremy's faces when it vanished? OH! Priceless!" Billie peeked out the tent flaps as the group caught their breath from booking it through the mass of people. "We should wait it out here. I feel like at least one of us will get trampled in that mess." The group agreed and sat on the benches on the side of the room. "Oh!" Billie continued gushing. "This is almost as funny as at tryouts! Almost as funny as Jamie trying to sneak into the girl's dorms! No offense, man."

Jamie grabbed her board. _Why is me trying to get into the girl's dorms funny?_

Billie was still trying to wear off her rush, and laughed a bit before responding. "Heheh…well, you know, 'cause you're not supposed to and you act like it's such a normal thing."

Jamie didn't understand. _Why am I not supposed to?_ She pressed.

Billie stopped laughing and gawked at her along with Enjore and Diana. "Well, you know why." Jamie shook her head. She wasn't catching on. "Because you're a _boy_." Jamie goggled at her for a moment as she continued to joke. "Last time I checked, boys and girls used different bathrooms for a reason. It's the same thing with dorms, man." She looked to Enjore and Diana who seemed to share the same view.

Jamie smiled as she wrote on her board. _I'm a girl._ She held it up for the four to see. The girls stared at her for a minute. Billie started laughing, but Enjore stared at her intently while Diana looked her up and down. They seemed to understand that this wasn't a joke. Tyler, in the background, looked mildly surprised, but not in the same way the rest were. He wore a smile.

"Stop trying to mess with us," Billie said. Jamie held the board up again. "No…You're a boy…" Jamie held the board higher. "I don't believe it!"

Jamie took the board away and wrote something new to which everyone tried to get a peek at while she scribbled. _I can prove it._

"No! No. That's okay," Billie said quickly. "Let's not be too hasty, now. Keep your clothes on. We're trying to keep this show G-rated."

Jamie giggled. _That's not what I meant._ Jamie remembered how, when she looked at herself in the mirror, at first, she had thought it was a boy, mimicking her actions, but she realized when she took off her glasses that it was merely herself. Jamie removed her glasses in front of the group. Enjore stood up next to Billie to get a better view.

"Merlin's beard…" Diana said, flabbergasted.

"Great Gandalf…" Billie mouthed, dumbfounded. "GANDALF, MAN! WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL US YOU WERE A FRIGIN' GIRL?!"

_I honestly thought you knew._

"Well, Jamie," Billie said. "You might've gotten a clue when we made you stay in the boys' dorms."

Diana nodded. "Or by the way people acted around you."

"I can't believe none of us figured it out!" Billie said.

"I did." Tyler smiled from the sidelines. There was no hint of a stutter in his words.

"You knew?!" Billie was astounded. "How could you not tell us?!"

"I thought she was trying to keep it a secret as some feminist protest and I'm not one to tattle. Besides, I thought the situation was interesting."

Jamie stared for a moment before starting to write. _That's why you wouldn't stop staring at me in the dorms before! You knew I was a girl!_

Tyler blushed, "Yeah. That's why."

"This is so weird and exciting at the same time," Diana squealed.

"You seriously didn't know we thought you were a boy?" Enjore said in disbelief.

"Talk about clueless," Billie expressed, folding her arms.

"I can't wait to tell the others!" Diana announced, barely able to contain her elation.

"Leave Rush to me," Enjore smiled. "I can't wait to see the look on his—"

"Wait!" Billie shouted, suddenly pacing the locker room. "Call me a genius. Just do it!"

"We're not doing that," Enjore stated flatly.

"I've got it! The perfect plan!"

"Spit it out, then."

Billie turned to into the faces of her companions. "What if we don't tell anybody?" The room was silent waiting for her to continue. "What if we keep pretending that Jamie is a boy?"

"Billie…" Enjore started calmly. "ARE YOU BLOODY INSANE?!"

"Dude, think about it! Jamie's been doing it for two months already and nobody, but Tyler's noticed. Hell, the majority of the school doesn't even know she's mute."

Enjore stopped for a minute. "Now that I think about it, Professor Irwin got her boys' trainers."

"EXACTLY! What if we just keep it going? It would be so neat! Jamie has no voice, so no one can recognize that its high and she has short hair with boys' clothing and those glasses are perfect for obscuring her identity! If she leaves those on the rest of the year, no one will be able to tell the difference."

"The rest of the _year_?" Enjore said unsurely. "Billie, I don't know…"

"C'mon, guys! First years barely get to have any fun because of how young we are. Think about what it'll feel like to keep a secret of this extent!"

"Well, she _did _fool all of the teachers."

"Not even Vannozza realized it w-when she heard Jamie's actual voice!" Tyler encouraged.

Meanwhile, Diana was literally jumping in the background, waiting for her chance to add to the conversation. "Oh, _please_, Enjore?"

"Eh? IT'S NOT MY DECISION! Have you forgotten that it's _Jamie_ who will actually be playing along with this?" The group looked at Jamie sitting on the bench, all the rest of them now standing. By the look on their faces, it seemed as if they actually _had_ forgotten about Jamie. It made Jamie feel a little unimportant, like she was just being used for their entertainment. She didn't like it.

"What do you think, Jamie?" Diana asked with pleading eyes. Now that she thought about it, it did sound like fun. Besides, Diana and Billie had never really been included into the rest of the group of first year Ravenclaws and this would give them a chance to finally make friends with her, Enjore, and Tyler. It couldn't heart, right?

Jamie wrote, sure to keep the board secured in her lap, away from the group's prying eyes. She stood up and flipped the board. _I'll do it._ Diana rushed up and hugged her while the rest had rather proud looks on their faces.

"Should we tell the rest of the boys?" Diana asked the group.

Billie shook her head. "The less people that know, the better."

"Billie's right," Enjore agreed. "If information like that gets into Rush, Roscoe, and Francis's hands, the word that Jamie is dressed in drag will spread through the school like wildfire in a forest where the trees are made of gasoline. We'd better keep this to ourselves."

"Well, then, I guess there's only one thing left to do," Diana said seriously, switching her expression from playful to severe so fast, it scared Jamie. "Sumberparty!"


	13. A Vague Message

Chapter 13-A Vague Message

Jamie stared into the blank sheet of black parchment in front of her. It seemed as if it were actually staring back at her, trying to tell her something, but, like herself, it had no voice to talk with. It had been incapacitated. She knew not to toss it. It couldn't be useless. She was sure someone had sent it for a reason, just as someone had put that enchantment on the manor, rendering her dumb, for a reason. Both were a mystery that she needed to solve, but the parchment seemed to be a more pressing issue since she had received it sooner. It had been over six weeks and she still came up dry on what it was about. Who knew, though? Perhaps, if she kept walking, she would find and oasis in the desert of black sand that welcomed her by name through its pearly letters.

Jamie sat at an empty library table while people shuffled around her, groping books with their hands and putting back ones that weren't helpful. Jamie had asked the librarian if she knew a place to start and she had suggested looking through the history of owl post. Jamie had discovered that the owls had been selectively bred for delivering secret messages in times of war. She learned that they became poplar for everyday life when more people began learning how to read and paper was more readily available. She had practically memorized the original postal routes the creatures took in the eighteenth century. The one thing she could not find was any mention of a secretive type of black paper that had to be written on in shining white ink. She checked the History of Parchment by a historian she had seen a great deal lining the shelves known as Bathilda Bagshot.

After reading a third book on decoding secret messages, she noticed the sun dropping extremely low in the sky, so its yellow color stretched out and became a red as if someone had smashed raspberries across the sky. She sighed, wondering if Tyler was up on the roof. Another thought had occurred to her the other day when she was about to fall asleep. Why hadn't Tyler confronted her about her gender earlier? She slowly wiped this question from her mind as she drifted to sleep, knowing that he was a timid boy. She wondered if one day he would just walk up to the group and start talking like he had never stuttered a day in his life. She imagined him at age thirty or so, laughing about good old times with a group of friends with blackened faces or perhaps a spouse she couldn't envision either. "Hey, remember when I was a kid and I was so shy, I used to mess up my words a lot?" She smiled at the thought. If people could transfer emotions to one another, she'd give Tyler a little bit of Roscoe and Rush's spirit, Enjore's perception, and Billie's carelessness.

Now that Jamie thought it, though, each of her friends could use a little bit of the other's personality. Billie needed a bit more of Enjore's sense and Francis's adaptably; Rush, needed Enjore's acumen; Enjore needed a bit of Rush's neglectfulness and Diana's kindness; Francis needed some of Billie's free spirit; Roscoe could do with a little of Jamie's patience and care for others; and Jamie could most definitely use a bit of everyone. Maybe, though, that was the purpose of a friend. No one can be perfect by leeching qualities off others. Perhaps friends were there to merely fill in the gaps.

"What is that you're looking at?" Jamie nearly fell out of her seat. She had almost forgotten about the black letter clutched in her hand. She looked up to see the professor that Vannozza had turned to when trying to switch Jamie and Tyler's' voices back. The way Vannozza talked about her, she sounded like the world's cleverest old lady. Jamie had never actually gotten the chance to have a decent conversation with her before, but that was probably just because she wasn't in her class. Perhaps, when Jamie got older, she would take muggle studies herself. After all, Jamie knew for a fact, after listening to Enjore, that life at Alden Manor was not the regular life of all muggle children. She guessed that she would learn a lot from the class, but when she first heard of it, she was a little surprised that the school had it. She had the idea in her head that, since wizards lived in the same towns and neighborhoods as muggles, they would know all about them. Apparently, she had been wrong. She'd frowned when a few people she'd met had never even heard of a telephone. Jamie had been trapped in a secure manor her entire life and still knew more about regular muggles than a lot of the people here did. Were wizards really so ignorant that they didn't even know what was going on all around them? Roscoe hadn't a clue what the prime minister's name was.

"You don't know what this is?" the woman deciphered. Jamie shook her head. The lady sat in the chair next to her. "That there is one of my inventions." Jamie perked up. "Yes, I remember discovering it when my younger son's playmate squirted me with ink. At first, I was enraged that he had gotten my clothes covered in the black substance, but I noted the boys' laughter and, once it started to dry, the ink faded until its eventual vanishing act. The boy informed me that it was disappearing ink, serving no real purpose, but to be fun. Intrigued, I went to a muggle novelty shop and purchased some for my own benefit. I soon discovered how it works, but even better, how to make a magical product out of it." Jamie leaned forward, quite intrigued by the woman's story and itching to know how this had anything to do with her letter. "Wizards have an invisible ink they use on rare occasions which can simply be revealed with a spell. Not very useful for concealment if someone suspected writing to be there. I discovered that muggle invisible ink is much different from wizard Vanishing Ink. You see, I found that there was an ingredient in owl's blood that turned the invisible substance white. Imagine how it would be used in communication! Now, every intercepted owl would hold a blank sheet of parchment, specifically black because of the white color the ink turned. I see you have already figured that out, though," she said, hinting to the front of the letter addressed to Jamie. Jamie just nodded, rather impressed by the woman. Vannozza was, once again, right. This woman was, indeed, impressive.

Looking down at the front of her parchment, she didn't quite understand. The Professor just said that the ink would only be revealed when mixed with owl's blood, yet she had never deliberately poured owl's blood over the front of the letter…but it had gotten there accidentally! The owl that delivered her post had had a patch of dried blood on its chest! When that was a new injury, the owl must've bed onto the letter and caused the ink to react while it must've missed the ink on the opposite side where the letter's actual writing was!

Jamie excitedly got her board out. _Do you have any owl's blood?_

"Well, not on me, but I'm sure there's still a vial in my room somewhere...I suppose you'd like me to fetch it?" Jamie nodded rapidly. The woman sighed. "It's just such a long walk and my legs aren't what they used to be. If this school didn't have a charm against it, I would apparate there. If you remember where the room is, I'll give you the key and you can go fetch it." Jamie stood up, hopping from foot to foot. "Oh, alright. Here." She swished the keys back momentarily from Jamie grasp. "But, if there's anything missing from my office when I get back, you can expect a dose of truth serum and a week's detention." She handed the keys to Jamie. As Jamie bolted out of the room, the Professor hollered after her, "AND ONLY USED A DROP ON A TOWEL! TRUST ME, IT WILL BE ENOUGH!" Jamie scuttled out of the room to the sounds of the Professor being reprimanded by the librarian for shouting.

Jamie dashed down the hall and up two flights of stairs until she reached the door. Compared to the size of the school, it really wasn't that far. The Professor was fairly old, though. Probably in her eighties. As Jamie entered the empty classroom, she shifted through the keys, of which, there were at least twenty. She decided to skip the preferred method and took out her wand. _Alohamora_, she thought clearly.

Suddenly, the classroom door turned a glowing shade of red as if it were iron that had been heated to be shaped. "HOW _DARE_ YOU USE THAT TRIVIAL SPELL ON ME!" Jamie jumped back. Where had that come from? "UGH. ALWAYS THE FIRST YEARS. UP HERE, CHILD." Jamie looked at the smoldering door and goggled at a pair of eyes made from coat hooks, staring at her angrily. "SOME PEOPLE! WHAT IS YOUR NAME? GO ON. SPIT IT OUT. WHY SO SILENT? PHEONIX GOT YOUR TOUNGUE?!" Jamie just stared in awe. The Professor truly was brilliant. Did she think this up herself? Jamie had only heard her talk about her own inventions, so she didn't doubt that the woman was capable of such a marvel.

"Now, Agnus, I know you are a keeper of privacy and I have always respected that, but I find that you overreact in some situations. Do not let your temper control you." Jamie looked toward where the voice was coming until she found that the door's lock had its own personality as well with screws for eyes and the keyhole as its vertical mouth. "Now, Dearie, if you hold keys, you may enter, but if you are simply a troublemaker, we kindly ask you to leave without incident and we can forget this whole thing ever happened." Jamie shakily held up the keys. "Now, you see, Agnus. She has reason enough to be entering if she has those in her possession."

"Right, just too lazy to use the correct method. Magical shortcuts every time with these children."

The lock sighed and spoke a short little rhyme. "Place the key inside of me and behold our layer triumphantly." Jamie took out a red colored key and inserted it into the hole of the lock. "Ooooh! That tickles! I'm sorry, Dearie, but that is not the right key. Try the blue one." Jamie complied and the animations vanished as if they were only a dream. The door swung open and Jamie gingerly stepped inside the messiest room she had ever seen. Things were strewn everywhere. Everything from papers to potions were scattered along her barely visible desk while a tank held many fish that were circling what looked like mug and silverware. A muffled squawking was coming from somewhere in the room while a quill seemed to be writing on its own over a book that was flipping its own pages. The room was the most magical and crowded thing she had ever seen in her life. Though Jamie had always preferred organization, she loved the room more than any other one at Hogwarts. It would've been second below the roof on her list of favorite places at the school.

Jamie searched the room completely, pulling out stacks of newspaper and discovering that the squawking had, evidently, been some animal that was now hiding in the light fixture silently after freeing it from a prison of junk. Finally, she found a bottle labeled _Owl's Blood_ on the shelf. The Professor had obviously not considered that Jamie wouldn't think to first look under a disintegrating book labeled, _The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore._ Whatever it was, it looked to be over a century old.

Grabbing a towel laying on the floor, she used the dropper in the bottle to place a heap of blood onto the towel. When it soaked in, she streaked the front and back on the letter in owl's blood. The message on it was barely audible as it looked like it had been scribbled at the last minute by someone in a rush.

Jamie,

STAY WHERE YOU ARE! Do not attempt to leave your location or try to contact me in any way before the day that "The Crazed" left. At that time, send me a note which will clarify your current situation. Congratulations on unlocking the secret to this note. Keep that ingredient in handy and use my methods.

Jamie ogled the note. It was written very oddly, as if someone was afraid of mentioning specifics. The first thing Jamie tried to figure out was who had written it. They hadn't signed their name, but there were a few things they left behind to suggest their identity. Also, the person had written "me" as if she would immediately know who it was. She went over it piece by piece. _Stay where you are _obviously meant that she should not try to leave the school. That was kind of obvious, though, wasn't it? She had classes here and place to live. Why would they write that? The thing on the note that tipped her off that someone from the manor had written it were the words _The Crazed_. It was a term that Madam and Master Alden and Madam Cox would use to describe her mother. Of course, none of them would write to her in this tone. By the method of writing and the sloppiness, it had to be Ben.

Next part. …_before the day that "The Crazed" left_. The day she left? Why didn't he just say Christmas? And what on Earth was her "current situation"? The last two sentences were as easy to discern as the first. He was telling her that if she wanted to contact him, she should use invisible ink on back paper as well. Also, there would be more letters from him, so she should keep the owl's blood handy.

The note was peculiar. She'd never read anything like it. Then again, she had never received a letter from Ben before. Perhaps this was just the way he wrote? She doubted it. He was always very direct. To write a letter this ambiguous, he would've needed to sit and think about how he would phrase each sentence. Why was he doing it, then? Was he afraid that Madam Alden would read it? No. He'd sent it by owl. What muggle could intercept a flying creature? Then again, Ben was a rather paranoid boy. The thought that he could think someone was trying to read his mail definitely sounded like a Ben idea.

There was still another question she hadn't quite resolved. Why did he want her to send the letter on Christmas? She knew that he needed her to send a letter in order for him to gain access to an owl, but why not tell her to send it as soon as possible? That reminded her. She needed to reply. What would she say? That she stayed where she was and was using his methods? No. Something told her that he wanted her to elaborate while keeping the information cryptic, so only he or one of her brothers would understand.

Jamie grabbed a convenient vial from the garbage can and squeezed a half the original container of owl's blood into it, thinking that the Professor probably wouldn't notice either way. She searched the woman's desk until she found some colored sheets of paper labeled _Construction Paper_, which were thick and smelled like cardboard, and took a few black sheets, hoping that "construction" didn't signify that the sheets would magically turn themselves into miniature buildings or hammers. She ran from the room and returned the keys to the Professor giving her only a brief smile before leaving the room, so she couldn't hold her in one spot to talk to her for hours.

Though Jamie barely understood why the letter had been written, she knew what it implied. Ben must be in some kind of danger.


	14. Dragon Porridge

**AN: If you intend to understand the end, don't skip this chapter. Trust me, it comes up later.**

Chapter 14-Dragon Porridge

"I always love this part of November!" Professor Douglas said enthusiastically, shuffling through a pile of papers at the front of the room while the children stood impatiently behind their cauldrons. For some reason, Francis couldn't seem to stop looking into Jamie's cauldron as if she'd magically created a potion at every five second interval. "So many colored leaves and migrating birds and…"

"…excuses for professors to give us essays." Jamie heard Rush whisper to Roscoe.

"…mums! They will be our main ingredient in making Dragon Porridge! I thought we'd try something extra enjoyable today. This is a new potion which each and every one of you will be able to sample if you make it correctly. It could, possibly, even be on your OWLs in four years." Half the class groaned.

Professor Douglas laid several handfuls of ingredients on his desk and students began to make their way to pick them up. "Sir," Diana asked. "Where are the mums?"

"In due time," Professor Douglas winked. "It is good to know that, at least, one of my students is paying attention." Diana blushed and scurried back to her seat with her ingredients. The potion was fairly simple to make, adding water first, then tossing in spices and dried pieces of fruit which disintegrated immediately. Jamie felt as if she were making soup for Madam Alden back at the manor. After the ginger and poxyroot was added, the concoction started to sizzle, sounding a bit like a hissing cat if it were drunk. The more Jamie stirred the potion, the clearer it seemed to get until Jamie could see the bottom of her cauldron through the settling substance. She expected it to be thick, but when she pulled out her wand, it was as if it were mere tonic water, flowing smoothly down into the cauldron.

"Alright!" Professor Douglas announced, rubbing his hands together. "Time for the mums!" To Jamie's surprised, the flowers had not been prepared at all. They were still potted individually and handed out to the students, one per person. "Now, pour your potion into your flower pot." The class looked at him, unsure. "Go on. That's right, Mister Foster. The rest of you as well." The class complied. "Now, if you've done it right, the flower should turn a darker shade of its original color." After Jamie poured her potion into the pot, she looked over to see Francis frowning at his bright blue mum which had originally been yellow.

"Er…mate, I meant to tell you," Rosoce said from behind. "You were stirring it counterclockwise instead of clockwise. I would've told you sooner, but the damage had been done." Francis did not look happy.

Jamie stared back at her own flower to see veins of red tunnel through its stem until they found the flower. The pedals blushed from a light orange to a cherry red that glowed magnificently. "Excellent, Mister Chadwick!" Diana giggled while Enjore, Tyler, and Billie's eyes bulged, relaxing immediately. Had he said that two and a half months ago, Jamie might've gotten a clue about her gender confusion. "Now, I'll go around the class and tell you if you have done it correctly. If so, I give you permission to eat the flower." Jamie's eyes widened. Eat? He wanted them to _eat_ the flower? Was he insane? "I saw that, Mister Foster. Everyone, don't worry. The mum is an edible flower, it simply tastes a bit tangy." No one bothered to give the flower a sniff let alone put the thing in their moth. Jamie had eaten a dandelion stem once, but that had tasted awful. Swallowing hard, she leaned over and bit the glowing flower off its stem, chewing the thing in her mouth.

Professor Douglas was right. The flower was a bit tangy, but a juice flowed into her mouth that must've been the potion because parts of the flower began popping next to her teeth and on her tongue as if tiny molecules were exploding inside its petals. Nonetheless, with an expression on her face as if she was eating a rock cake, she chewed the flower. "Look at that!" Arcturus Abney called from across the room. "Jamie ate the flower!"

"Her cheeks are glowing red!"

Jamie could hardly figure out who was talking as her eyes brightened as if she were producing laser beams from them. They melted into a gleaming scarlet color. It seemed as if red was a complete spectrum in itself. She tasted a thousand different combinations of flavor as if she had stuffed an entire box of Ever Flavor Beans into her mouth all at once. For once in her life, two of her senses combined into one and it felt as if color and taste were meant to be together always. How could she not have realized it sooner? I would've sounded odd normally, but the maroon in her eyes did, indeed, have a taste.

Finally, the substance felt soft enough that she could swallow and, the minute it left her mouth, her senses returned, vanquishing the sight and taste combo. Her cheeks and eyes were no longer glowing red, but a warm feeling was passing through her chest, then lower ribcage. After a while, Jamie felt as if her internal body temperature was rising, like a fever that could kill her after a minute, yet she felt fine. The heated sensation was nice, not incapacitating or fatal. She felt like a star, radiating her own life and warmth to share with the world. She was filled with an intoxicating effulgence and gusto. She could do anything! The sky was the limit! She could probably fight twenty people at once. Maybe she'd take a few swings for practice and then give the beat down to whoever didn't like her.

She held up her arms in fists and noticed that the skin had been replaced with a thin exoskeleton. Dazzling red cellophane coated ever part of her she could see. This was great! She felt like breaking every school rule that had ever been laid into place. She felt like battling gridylows and the squid at the lake's bottom. She'd always been told that the centaurs had a superiority complex. Perhaps she'd fix that with a few blows. Pow! Pow! Smash! This was great! She wanted to beat up seventh years and climb the side of the school. If she jumped off the roof now, she knew a broom would catch her. Better yet, she'd on clouds! Jamie let out a breath of steam to show the crowd around her that she meant business. The scalding vapor felt like nothing more than a hot shower to Jamie. The children, though, jumped back, Francis yelping in pain from some of it hitting the side of his arm.

Everyone had returned to their seats and began biting the flowers, chewing wildly as their eyes glimmered a fiery color and cheeks lighted the dimly lit dungeon. "Mister Chadwick is now exhibiting starting symptoms of the Dragon Porridge! You see, class, the potion is extremely potent in its raw form, so it is absorbed by the mum plant to dial its effect down to a tone that humans can handle. This potion is beginning to be used for aurors to protect themselves. This armor is useless against spells, but will absorb the shock of virtually any blow. The ministry is beginning to like Dragon Porridge more and more since it is so easy to make and can be used to, say, protect a person from debris hitting them in a heated battle. Not that there are many more after the defeat of the Dark Lord, but this potion can be extremely handy. The only defect is that, along with the armor, comes extreme egotism which can make this transformation more suicidal than helpful."

"Better to not feed it to Rush," Enjore whispered to Diana, still a bit hesitant to eat the flower. Instead, she poured the remaining contents of her potion into a vial. Jamie goggled at her. "Don't know when something like this might come in handy," she winked.

"I could've thought of that!" Rush boomed, his skin drying and peeling away to reveal a yellow coat of armor, just coming to the peak of his splendor.

"_You_?" Roscoe chuckled. "You have the intelligence of the average muskrat. I am the one who had the common knowledge to see the usefulness of this Dragon Porridge."

Rush opened his mouth, but Enjore beat him to the punch. "Excuse me; my narcissistic knights in yellow armor, but both of you _drank_ your potions. Stop trying to take credit for my work."

"Human child, I merely transferred that thought to your mind," Roscoe boasted. Enjore raised her eyebrows.

Rush laughed slow and about an octave deeper than his usual voice. "You _will_ go out with me, Enjore Misra. OBEY MY COMMAND!"

"You're quite the charmer." She said sarcastically. "What gal wouldn't want to skip off into the sunset with a dragon Jesus?"

"Skip? We shall fly!"

Not many of the people noticed their conversation considering they were so indulged in their own. Everyone seemed to think that they were the best at everything and, if ever challenged, would let out a whiff of steam to show their superiority, harming only those who made the Dragon Porridge wrong and, therefore, did not eat their flowers. Nearing the end of class, Jamie felt a tingling go through her spine and waterfall down the rest of her body until it felt like pins and needles were overtaking her existence. After a fuzzy sensation drifted through her eyes, Jamie looked down at her arms to see her exoskeleton peeling away and landing on the floor amongst the dead skin she had shed to obtain the armor. A few people looked revolted by the dead epidermis lying all over the floor while several others asked if they could keep some. Finally, Jamie's heated pride simmered away in steamy residue all around her, leaving her wondering why she ever thought jumping off the roof or trying to fight people was a good idea. Still, though, the porridge had made an impression on her. She had never thought of breaking the rules to be a fun idea before now. It had always seemed like a necessity. She felt like she now understood her brother, Nathan, a bit better.


	15. Courage or Stupidity

Chapter 15-Courge or Stupidity

"Remember the plan?" Diana asked.

"Hell to the yeah! We bag up Jamie and shove 'er into the forest until it gets late, then—"

"No, no, no, Billie!" Diana sighed walking in the hall next to Jamie. "We raid the common room with dung bombs and sneak into our dorms while the other students are away."

Billie sighed. "But that's so boring! I like my plan better! Why can't we do it?"

"Didn't you say that in three of four scenarios one of us loses a limb?"

"Well, yeah…"

"That's why."

The girls sat down at the Ravenclaw table in the Great Hall. It was only one week into December. "Say," Roscoe started. "Did you hear about the new sleep collector law for minors?!"

"I told you, Roscoe. It's not new," Enjore told him, annoyed. "It's been in place since early July. Of course they've heard of it."

"If we're left alone, even in Hogsmeade, we could get sleep taken away!"

"Maybe, in two years, the law will be abolished," Diana suggested.

Roscoe snorted. "Yeah, like that filth from the ministry is going to toss easy sleep out the door like that!"

"Don't call them filth," Diana admonished in a low, yet stern tone of voice.

Rosoe stood up. "Or, what? Are you so paranoid that you think something's gonna happen if I insult those people? Huh? LET THEM HEAR ME!" Rosoce's face was getting red and scary. Ben never looked like that when spouting his theories. He said emotions can take control of you when you do that and, by the looks of it, he was right. Roscoe's face was contorted and filled with ugly lines.

Jamie wanted to shy away, but saw Enjore stand tall against him which made her, somehow, fill with courage. It was as if that action had given her the strength to know that being afraid was a foolish thing to do. She now understood that courage meant that the set purpose of bettering a situation was in mind while stupidity was merely creating more harm from a decision that could not possibly make things improve. Enjore was one and Roscoe was the other. "Calm down, Peter," Enjore said in a calm, steady voice. Jamie saw that her fingers were twitching unnaturally at her side.

Roscoe looked around as if his body had been infiltrated for a short time and he had no idea what had just happened. "Yeah," he said absently, complying. When Enjore took her seat as well, Jamie kept her eyes on Enjore's fingers and noticed that her legs were bouncing in a shaky way as if she was extremely anxious. Jamie had forgotten that Enjore did this until recently. She still hadn't figured out why.

"Soooooooooooooo..." Billie practically shouted. "Hehe."

_Why does the ministry want sleep?_

Enjore did not seem to want to pursue the topic any farther, but still responded. "They use it, so people won't have to sleep, supposedly. They're only allowed to take away twelve hours of sleep from you, but they take that same amount every time they can, never less, unless you have something to do in that time span. It's like a tax. Every year, sleep collectors can take twelve hours of sleep from all witches and wizards and its used for who knows what. They're rather secretive."

_They?_

"THE BLOODY FORSAKEN MINISTRY!"

"What Roscoe said. They can collect it like a tax for adults, but those under seventeen have to be unaccompanied to have it taken, they're not required."

Jamie remembered her encounter with the sleep collector and thought it odd that the ministry of magic would want sleep. Did they give it to people so they would feel rested or tired? Why did they want it at all? Even for Jamie's naïve mind, the whole thing sounded rather fishy.

As Jamie passed an empty corridor, she could hear what sounded like a muffled laugh come from in front of a rather distraught Leo who was leaning against a closet door. As Jamie neared the prefect, she could hear that the person on the opposite side of the door was not laughing, they were crying.

"Vannozza, I didn't mean it," Leo pleaded to the sobbing girl in the closet. "Come out, now." Vannozza made an inaudible squeal and continued wailing. "What was that?"

"Just GO AWAY!" she screamed, making Leo jump back and finally notice Jamie staring.

"Nothing wrong here," he said unconvincingly. It looked to Jamie as if everything was wrong. "Hurry along." He smiled uncomfortably. Jamie tarried for a minute before walking slowly down the hallway, listening intently to the pleas and lamenting from the boy in the hall while the girl howled in the closet. Leo had never seemed like the brightest boy to Jamie, more of just a novelty that tagged along behind Vannozza who seemed to like having him around. Perhaps he made her feel superior? That must've been it. It reminded her of Roscoe and Francis's relationship where Roscoe would suggest something and Francis would immediately be into it, not expressing much of his own opinion or will.

After dizzying herself on the endless stairwell, Jamie came to the eagle knocker. When she first came to Hogwarts, she was slightly worried that you had to answer a question. How would she respond without a voice? What would happen if she needed to go the common room alone, without someone to answer for her? Her fears were relieved, though, after the eagle knocker seemed to know what to do.

Jamie clanged the brass eagle against the wall, sounding like a tin can hitting glass, but a few octaves lower. An amicable voice cooed from the eagle's mouth. "What is the difference between courage and stupidity?" Jamie stood for a moment, wondering if the eagle had read her thoughts. She had just thought about this at the start of the day and at the sorting. This question was probably the reason she was in Ravenclaw and after three months of being here, she finally discovered how she would answer it.

Jamie pulled her wand from her robes, holding it high, pointed at the eagle's mouth, and thought as if she were preforming a spell, but with different results. The eagle began to speak in her own voice, something she barely ever got to listen to the sound of anymore. "Stupidity is when a foolish decision is made based on irrational logic, creating a liability, while courage is a deliberate attempt to create a preferred outcome by way of deliberate hazard."

"Well said," the eagle commended, revealing the door to the Ravenclaw common room. She smiled, realizing that she was beginning to understand more about life.

Jamie rushed up to her dorm to find Roscoe and Francis playing a game of exploding snap and pulled out her black construction paper and invisible ink. Christmas would be here in only two and a half weeks. Jamie needed to get started with her letter. She finally had free time after finishing her extensive workload and wasn't too keen on procrastinating. Jamie ventured back to the common room where she took a seat by the fire where some sixth years were chatting away on the couch, not fully acknowledging her presence.

Let's see…how should she write this? She needed to make it vague yet tell him things about her life since he seemed to want to know for some reason. He didn't mention his name in the last letter, so she felt it should be left out. What did he want to know about? Her friends? Professors? Possibly the Dragon Porridge? She decided it would be safe just to write it as if it were a regular letter where Ben was actually curious about all of this, casually hinting that she wanted a bit more information. She started.

Dear Future Conspirator,

I have enjoyed my time here, meeting people that sleep tons, fight more, and obsess over sports. Gnomes get smarter every day. If only there was an object that could tell if a person was eavesdropping on you or deceiving you in some way. If there were, mine would be giving off the red alert, Some are made to teach, instructing me on what to do and inventing their own methods of communication. I feel sometimes as if I'll eat porridge and my skin will turn to dragon armor, but, other than that, I'm fine. It would be nice of you to enlighten me, so my awareness may spark.

-your naïve rug rat

_There_, she thought as the ink faded away. That was about as vague as she could make it. Perhaps she should change it. It seemed like anyone reading it wouldn't understand, but, then again, if Ben replied with what he got and didn't, she would have a better idea of what he knew.

Jamie sealed the letter and tucked it away in her trunk, reminding herself that she needed to send it by Christmas. Out of nowhere, a scream echoed from the common room and smoke billowed through the door seconds after. Jamie froze. The girls were supposed to throw dung bombs in the common room for the sleepover they planned on having over Christmas break. Was it possible they changed the date and just didn't inform her? She decided to sneak off to the girls' dorms to check with them, just in case. It truly didn't make sense, though. The boys would all be gone for Christmas, so they wouldn't notice how Jamie wasn't in her bed. Why would they do it now?

Jamie scurried to the common room, holding her breath, but something was wrong. Amongst the smoke, everyone was laying on the ground without movement. What happened? They should've all been flushed out of the common room, but, instead, they were motionlessly strewn over the couch and floor. The only thing Jamie could see moving was a large, oddly shaped figure that appeared to have two legs and an entire second body growing from its shoulder. The silhouette headed for the exit. Someone was trying to carry a student out of the room! Jamie bolted after it, her breath trying to push itself out of her lungs. She stopped outside the common room's smoke to think. Was chasing after a mysterious hooded figure carrying someone away an act of courage or foolishness? She decided the latter.


	16. Enjore's Secret

Chapter 16-Enjore's Secret

The mistletoe hanging in the hallways was inviting many of the couples of the school to show themselves in public. Jamie had never realized how many of them there were until the curious plant was hung around the school. Some of the pairs were even her age, but most were in their last few years at Hogwarts.

Everyone Jamie knew seemed to have a different reaction. Diana would gush about having a boyfriend of her own one day; Roscoe would tell them to "get a room" although Jamie wasn't entirely sure what that expression meant. Francis would usually follow his lead without telling the couples directly like Roscoe, who often got angry looks, but would ignore or laugh at them. Billie would pretend she was barfing up sick. Vannozza would look at them as if mildly interested while Leo would stare longingly. Rush would laugh, saying he was never going to get lovey-dovey with a girl like that.

"Well," Enjore started smugly. "I guess it's time for you to stop hitting on me, then."

"Oh, yeah…" he'd say, suddenly remembering his "Bindi Goddess" which Rush had dubbed her because it seemed to bring about a whole new level of annoyance from Enjore that Rush had never known existed.

"I told you before, Rush," Enjore repeated. "Bindis are for married women, not eleven-year-olds."

"Then I'm foreshadowing the future when we're married."

Enjore rolled her eyes.

Jamie wasn't sure how she felt. Why did they do it? Honestly, it looked like they were eating from each other's mouths, trying to get better leverage by holding each other. She didn't understand how pressing your lips against a boy's could possibly be entertaining or enjoyable. It looked more disgusting than anything which was probably why, out of all the first year Ravenclaws, only Diana ever talked about doing it herself.

Rush began trying to smuggle Enjore under the mistletoe practically every day as Christmas break neared. "You know, Enjore, it can get awfully cold in the courtyard."

"Don't go there, then," she countered.

Rush pushed his long hair back. "Maybe we could congregate under the mistletoe, just the two of us, and—"

"Cut your hair?"

"—keep each other warm." Enjore snorted. "C'mon. It just takes one little word for you to accept my offer and that word is 'yes'."

"It just takes two words for me to reject your offer and those words are 'dream on'."

"Just as long as you're dreaming with me."

"Funny, but I distinctly remember you mentioning something about how you'd rather get the flu vaccine than be publically affectionate."

"I said that before remembering how you complexion gets to me."

"I wonder if there's a spell to go pale."

"I can't believe someone beat us to the punch with those dung bombs," Diana complained. "Now, if we try to do it, it'll get pinned on whoever did it the first time."

"So what?" Billie asked. "It's not like they got caught."

Two weeks ago, Jamie had waited until the smoke had gone and traipsed back into the common room to find that no one could remember going to sleep. They all thought it peculiar that they'd forgotten their conversations, but continued as if it had, indeed, been a regular dung bomb. Everyone was in such a daze that no one seemed to question it.

Diana sighed, "Still…"

"Afraid of getting caught?"

"A bit." The three girls were eating lunch at the practically empty table. As far as Diana and Billie knew, Enjore was sleeping. Jamie had mailed her letter to Ben that day and nervously waited for a reply even though she knew it might not come for a day or two; maybe even three weeks like the previous time.

Jamie was sitting by the window when, surprisingly enough, an owl carrying a sheet of black parchment flew up and landed on the sill. Briskly opening the window, she caught hold of the letter and practically flew to the empty dorms, taking her owl's blood and dropping some onto a towel to wipe the parchment down.

Understood. Walk through the sleeping girl's dreams to find the one who disappears.

Jamie raised her eyebrows at the note. It was the shortest and oddest one yet. What did he mean? "The sleeping girl" reminded her of the story of sleeping beauty, but that didn't sound right. It had been a fairytale Ladie told her. All the fairytales like Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella were fake. Jamie didn't like the notion. She loved the concept of happily ever after where everything turned out for the best. Why couldn't that happen in real life?

She sighed. She'd figure it out later. For now, she needed to get to the girls' dorms. They'd be expecting her there soon. Jamie threw the note in her drawer and made her way to the first years' dorms. Surprisingly, Diana and Billie were not yet there. Not surprisingly, Enjore's bed was occupied. She walked over to the girl. Should she wake her? Probably. Otherwise, Billie would use the aguamenti spell to wake her and she thought Enjore should be awakened in a bit of a kinder way.

Jamie leaned over the bed to shake her awake, but, the moment of contact, Jamie felt her hands go cold. She froze in her position, an icy chill riding through her blood. She felt herself drop in frenzy of trembles onto the ground. Why was it so cold? Why couldn't she see anything anymore? Why was there a banging sensation in her head? She wanted desperately to throw her hands to her arms or legs to try to warm herself, but found she could not move. She was slowly slipping away into a woozy, dream state.

"Jamie? Jamie, what are you _doing _here?" Opening her eyes to slits, light filtered through. She widened them to see Enjore standing in front of her without her usual robes, but, instead, in jeans and a long-sleeved red shirt. She wasn't normal looking, though. She was a bit fuzzy, as if they were standing in a desert and Jamie had seen her distorted image from a distance. What was going on? Jamie looked around her. She was lying on the grass, not the floor of the girls' dorms at Hogwarts. There was no snow. In fact, the leaves were still changing color and gracefully gliding through the air to the ground.

"Where are we?" Jamie asked, surprised to hear her voice, even though it came out a second after her lips moved as if waiting until she was finished speaking for the actual sound to leave. "Why can I talk?"

Enjore mouthed something and the sound followed soon after. "It's nice to hear your voice after all this time." She extended a hand to help Jamie up. "And see you back in your burlap rags." Sure enough, Jamie was no longer wearing her Hogwarts robes, but, instead, sported the rags tucked safely away in her suitcase.

"What's going on, Enjore?"

"You touched me, right?" Jamie nodded. "We're in a, sort of, dream state, except we can still interact with the outside world. Here, our bodies stay asleep, safe and sound, while we can visit places at any point in time during our lifetime, but it's virtually impossible to meet up with yourself." Jamie wasn't quite sure what any of this meant. They were dreaming and could travel through time? It didn't make sense.

"Perhaps I'm not explaining it right. See, the ministry used to have these things called 'time-turners.' They were methods of going back in time a few hours, so you could accomplish an important task in one spot and, at the same time, be doing something in another. It was the equivalent of being in two places at once. Then, during the times of war with Voldemort, all the time turners were destroyed. The ministry could've easily made more, but decided that, ever since Voldemort and his followers took over the ministry, it would be too risky to have a device like that, so all documents containing information on it were destroyed and the people involved in their creation took a vow to never tell a soul how to make more. Many people had no idea how much trouble those things caused over the years because of the ministry's methods of concealing information.

"Anyway, what I'm talking about is not a time-turner, but it runs on the same idea. While you're in one place, you can be in another at the same time. The difference is that there are stricter guidelines. Let's say that I spend my day at Hogwarts, getting up early at six and going to bed at ten. That gives me eight hours of sleep. While I'm in that sleep mode, I'm not necessarily resting, though. I can go anywhere I want, as long as I've traveled there before in my life. For example, I can go to my house but I can't pay a visit to the house of a person I've never been to before unless I walk there from a location I'm familiar with. So, let's say I've never been to my neighbor's house. I can't jump there in my dream, but I can jump to my house and walk across the street to go into their house. Then, I've been there and can jump there automatically from any point in my dream. Watch." Enjore closed her eyes and the setting around them swirled until Jamie found herself standing on a pier, the wind blowing her hair back, yet she could not feel it. She could feel nothing. "Before, we were at a park near my house, now we've jumped to a pier I visited when I was six. See that pub over there? I've never been in there before, so I can't jump to that location because I can't remember it. The place needs to be set in your mind, even if it is from years ago. By walking in there now, I have a memory of what the inside looks like and can jump there whenever I want.

"This place should be nothing more than imagination. Just an extremely detailed dream." Enjore waved to a sailboat that passed and the crew waved back enthusiastically, some merely tossing their head to the side in acknowledgement. "But it's not. Everyone at this place, right now, October 5th, can see and interact with me. At this moment, we're at Hogwarts, I'm watching Quidditch tryouts with Rush, Roscoe, and Francis while you've probably just switched voices with Tyler." Jamie looked around her in awe, getting an odd feeling at the core of her being, now that she knew that she was somewhere at this exact moment, completely unaware that she was also on a pier outside Hogwarts.

"Remember two weeks ago, when we were talking about the sleep collectors and why the ministry needed sleep?"

"You said they might've used it for aurors, but didn't know entirely why they needed it."

She nodded. "Well, I wasn't telling you all the complete truth. When you go here, it's taking away from your sleep. Sure, your body is resting, but your mind is constantly processing new information. Without the required amount of sleep, a person can go crazy, but you can't get sleep from yourself. You have to steal it. You see, the ministry sends people out to collect sleep and they give it to us. It helps keep us sane. When you wake up from your dream, like this one, you feel perfectly rested because of that sleep filtering into your brain. I have the connection, but you don't, so you don't get any sleep.

"But, why do you need to go to this place?" Jamie asked. "What's the point of it all? I understand that it could be interesting, but what possible purpose does it serve? When it comes right down to it, this whole thing has to be pretty important for the ministry to be collecting sleep from people, doesn't it?"

"Let me backtrack and explain a little more. When I got my letter from Hogwarts and Professor Irwin came to my house to explain everything to us, I didn't want to go. It sounded cool, yeah, but I've had an ambition ever since I was a little girl: to become a scientist. I've wanted to know how things tick and study what's out there. Maybe I could actually make some difference in the world. If I went to Hogwarts, I'd have no possible hope of ever retaining enough knowledge about, well, anything! I mean, have you ever talked to some of the students? Well…you know what I mean. Have you ever seen how completely lost they are there? They live in a seventeenth-century world full of quill pens and oil lamps and are so caught up in their magical superiority that they have absolutely no idea what's going on!"

Jamie nodded. "I know what you mean. I did think it odd that people didn't know even trivial things about the world around them." Enjore looked a bit surprised at her speaking since she'd never heard Jamie express much of an opinion from being mute the entire time she'd known her.

"Listen, it's not like I blame them much. It's more the tradition of the place, but it seems so ridiculous to me. They don't have any important subjects like math or science. I'd have no hope of getting into a college if I went there and, let's face it, I'd rather go without my wand than live an ignorant life."

Even though Jamie loved Hogwarts, she could see where Enjore was coming from. Jamie suspected that if she lived with a normal family and went to a regular school, surrounded by children, she'd feel the same way about going to Hogwarts. After all, those were really the only attractive qualities the school offered to her. She didn't care all that much about spells or flying on brooms or magical creatures. The nurturing touch the school provided was Jamie's main draw.

"Why didn't you choose a muggle life, then?" Jamie inquired.

"Ugh. My parents. They said it was too big of an opportunity to pass up. I'd have an education where they'd never have to pay for college tuition and get a sure-fire job in the magical business world when I was only eighteen. Of course, I had to obey them and go. I expressed deeply, not only to my parents, but to Professor Irwin that my heart wasn't into going there. That's when Irwin got an idea. He had my parents sign a truckload of paperwork to get me into a free program where I would test out a harmless new technique for my first year. It was called 'sleep surrogating.' I was the youngest applicant. I could go to Hogwarts during the day while I attended public school as I slept.

"It was so ingenious! I started testing it over the summer so I could get the hang of it. I'm sure you saw me sleeping a lot in my room. I was thrilled when school started. All day, I would learn about potions and how to fix objects on command, and then I would close my eyes for bed and spend the night at school as if it were day! When I woke up, I felt as if I had been in a deep sleep while retaining all of my senses. My friends lied at Hogwarts while my dreams were stuck at home. I got two worlds in one. I no longer cared about drama my friends made up at home about me never being around. It sounds cruel and awful, but I ditched them all. I no longer cared about them once I realized what kind of people I could spend time with at my school of magic. I loved Rush, Roscoe, Francis, Tyler, Diana, and you so much better than anyone at my actual school. This caused many social problems for me that I hadn't even noticed until recently. I've apparently been dubbed countless cruel nicknames from my studiousness. If I were still a muggle, I probably would've cried to hear it, but when my friends told me, I laughed because I knew something they didn't. The best secret possible. I had a home and friends that would actually have my back instead of constantly stabbing it.

"I know I'm getting a little off topic, but I've never gotten to talk to anyone about this before! I was ordered to keep it all a strict secret and, now that you've found me out, I can't keep it all to myself! So far, the only side effect to me being a sleep surrogate is that I get occasional twitches. For some reason, I'll just feel odd and start winking or moving my fingers uncontrollably. It's a small issue, but I was told to report anything like it, so I did when I first encountered the problem on the train to Hogwarts. This is a method they're still developing, so it's bound to have its flaws."

Jamie was amazed. This was why Enjore slept so much. She wasn't just tired. She was leading an alternate life! Jamie tried to envision Enjore in a regular school surrounded by people carrying books and wearing clothes that didn't have house crests pinned to them. It was hard to think of friends that played card games instead of exploding snap and talked about their favorite football team with her instead of ranting about Quidditch. The whole thing reminded her of the vision she'd had of Tyler without his stutter. The only difference was, while Tyler couldn't seem to grasp his dream, Enjore was living hers practically every day.

Enjore sighed. "Well, since you're in the dream state with me, you can take us wherever you want to a moment in your life. You might as well try it out. You can't come with me on a regular basis. I'll probably be on thin ice once I tell the ministry you know, so this is a treat. Where do you want to go?"

Jamie didn't have to think past a moment to know where she would travel. "Alden Manor."


	17. Ladie's Secret

Chapter 17-Ladie's Secret

Enjore looked at her puzzled and moved her lips for a moment before sound came out. "Alden Manor? Isn't that where the gnomes came from?"

"It's also where I came from."

Enjore looked her over for a moment. "Why didn't you tell us?"

"I have my reasons. Let's leave it at that for now. You're not the only person who has secrets they must keep from others."

Enjore didn't seem to like this but nodded. "Just close your eyes and think of Alden Manor the last time you saw it."

Jamie obeyed, shutting her eyes peacefully and envisioning the manor when she stared off at it before leaving for Gregory's house, so she could sneak off and accomplish her dream of going to a school full of children. A tingling swelled her fingertips and she opened her eyes to a scene of prestige. A mansion stood tall behind protective steel gates while windows protruded from the ceiling, revealing the numerous attic bedrooms. From this angle, shack number two was not visible. She did, though, recognize a familiar silhouette: her own. She looked down the road to see herself strutting along the path.

"Is that you?" Enjore asked. Jamie nodded. "Get down!" Enjore ordered, keeping her voice quiet as she pushed Jamie into the corner of the fence.

"What?" Jamie whispered, confused.

"She may be far down the road, but she can still see us. Don't forget that the girl over there is you in the past. Do you remember ever seeing people at the gate when you left?"

"Well, no."

"What would you have done if you did?"

"I probably would've wanted to make sure they weren't manor folk trying to chase me down," she confessed.

"And if she runs up to us and sees herself, it could cause a little thing called a 'time paradox'." Jamie looked at her quizzically. She had never heard of such a thing. "You learn these things at public school."

"But, if this had already, happened, it can't possibly change," Jamie theorized. "Our actions here won't make any difference because technically, when I was living them before, they'd already happened."

"You catch on fast. Exactly right. Technically, in that girl's world—we'll call her Jamie Number Two—we've already done all of this even if she doesn't know it."

"Wait. I thought the events unfolding were new."

"To us. In JNT's world, they've already happened. As we stand here, she's heading to who knows where—"

"Gregory's house."

"Right. Time travel can get confusing because people always try to change the future. What they don't realize is that the future can't be changed. Their very actions in trying to alter what's happened in their time might be causing the very thing they try to prevent."

"They teach you all this when you become a sleep surrogate?"

"No. They tell you not to find yourself in the past, which was never a problem for me. I learned this stuff from the movies."

"Movies?"

"No time to explain. We only have as much time here as the ministry lends me each night. Lead the way."

Jamie spotted a high window in the corner of the mansion and knew who she wanted to talk to. She was silent as she and Enjore slipped through the unlocked gate and front door and traipsed up the creaking steps. Opening the door, Jamie was relieved to see a tall, beautiful, blonde twenty-one-year-old sprawled on the bed in her room, mumbling inaudible words. She wore the long, scarlet dress that was usually fitted around her comely hips. "Ladie!" Jamie whispered, shaking the woman. It felt a bit odd considering she couldn't feel Ladie's soft warm skin. She could just see the woman moving back and forth.

"Mmmmm?" the girl opened her eyes a sliver. "Jamie, go do you chores. Let me sleep. Didn't Madam Cox just cut your hair? It looks a lot longer." Regrettably, Jamie had not thought to cut her hair before coming here. She had been so excited upon hearing that she could grow it out at Hogwarts that she no longer cut her hair regularly. After five months, it was almost as long as Rush's hair. She knew now that if she was to keep up appearances as a boy, she should chop it. "You look healthy, too." Jamie had been eating more, lately. She figured it was a good thing that she could no longer see her ribs.

"Ladie , get up. I need to ask you something."

"Later…" Ladie mumbled, waving a hand.

"Please, Ladie," Jamie said urgently. "We don't have much time. We need to get back to Hogwarts."

On the last word, Ladie's eyelids flew apart and she nearly hit Jamie, she sat up so fast. "What did you just say?" Evidently, Ladie had heard of such a place. "How do you know about Hogwarts? You're only…" Ladie stared at the wall for a moment, her lips slightly parted. "…eleven…"

"I'm going there right now."

Ladie jumped up from her bed and started pacing. "Oh, how did you get the letter? Madam Alden made sure to get rid of everyone else's…even mine. Jamie, you can't go!"

"Ladie, you know about Hogwarts?"

"I can't believe this! How could this happen again?" Ladie wailed, paying her no mind. "Of course!" Ladie turned and stopped to face Jamie. "You take the mail in! Madam Alden made a mistake! Hah!" Jamie was confused. Didn't Ladie just want her to stay put? "Jamie, I beg of you." Ladie softly grabbed Jamie's shoulder while shrinking down to her level. "If you leave, Madam Alden will realize something is wrong. Not just me, but Tony, Nathan, and especially Ben will be in danger! Please, just stay put and keep your mouth shut!"

"I can't, Ladie. I'm already there."

Ladie stared deeply at Jamie, fear etched deep into her deathly gorgeous eyes, a brilliant shade of deep green. "What do you mean?"

Jamie looked to Enjore for approval, but the girl looked a bit scared herself. Still, she answered. "Keep it vague," Enjore approved.

Jamie looked to the attractive girl in front of her with messy blonde hair. She had just been sleeping and woke up groggy. Now, she looked wide awake. Jamie sighed. "I bear a question from the future. That's all I can really say."

"But, how? All the time turners have been destroyed." Somehow, Jamie was able hold off her shock and constantly emerging questions. How did Ladie know all of this? "Unless…" Ladie mused. "Are you a sleep surrogate?" Her eyes opened widely and she let go of Jamie, rising to her full height. "Are you in a dream now?! That would explain why you didn't join me while I was asleep!"

"No." Jaime said. "Enjore is."

"Enjore…? Oh!" Ladie seemed to just notice the girl of black hair and Indian complexion behind Jamie.

"I'm sorry, but I'm confused." Enjore said.

"You're not the only one," Ladie groaned, holding her head as if it were aching. "Come with me. These walls have ears. One of the reasons they move you here when you come of age. Luckily, the ministry monitors all houses for enchantments against apparition, so there's none here. Grab my arm." The two complied and Jamie instantly felt a gush of air swerve around every part of her body she thought existed. Her stomach practically flipped and she felt as if she was going to vomit from the incredible shock of being sucking into a vortex of empty space and, suddenly, laying on a cobblestone street.

"Where are we?" asked Enjore, breathing heavily on her knees.

"Hogsmeade. Just outside your school. This was your first time apparating, I'm guessing? You two did very well. The sick feeling will clear away momentarily. Get up, now. We need to sort this all out. Let's go to Goblin Goblets. It's usually a pretty crowded pub and less conspicuous than the Three Broomsticks." Enjore helped pry Jamie off the ground, feeling her pain and the two stumbled after Ladie, gaining strength with every step. They passed through an alley and came out to meet a tall, man, looking only a little older than Ladie. "Christopher!" Ladie greeted.

"Oh, hello Cheryl. How are you? Who've you got taggin' along?"

"Oh, these are my…uh…sisters." The man raised his eyebrows at Enjore who did not bear as much of a resemblance to Ladie as Jamie did.

"Is that so?"

"Half-sister," Enjore corrected.

"Ah. I see. Come on in. Haven't seen you around in a while."

"Ugh, been busy," Ladie smiled, flashing her brilliant, white smile. She ran her fingers through her hair. Jamie knew that any other girl who had just woken up would not be able to pull off a wrinkled dress and messy hair, but because of the veela enchantment, she looked fabulous no matter what. She changed her expression to serious grabbing his arm and dropping her voice as they walked in. "Listen, do you happen to have an available room in the back we could use for about an hour? I'd consider it a personal favor."

The man nodded. "Follow me." He led the three to a door behind the counter where drunken men whistled as they saw Ladie pass. Jamie didn't like the dark place at all. He ushered them into a door down the hallway and Ladie thanked him before shutting the door quickly behind her. The room was small, but brightly lit by old bulbs lining the corners, revealing boxes with different types of alcoholic drinks as labels. It must've been cold because Jamie could see the goosebumps covering Ladie's arms.

"Cheryl?" Jamie asked.

"I can't let them know my real name," Ladie sighed. "One day you'll understand. Now, what's your question?"

"Huh?"

"The one question you said you had for me when you woke me up. What is it?"

"Oh! Well, do you remember the gnomes that used to live on the manor in the gardens?"

"How do you know about those? We got rid of them when you were only a toddler!"

"We've had a bit of a run in with them," Enjore said.

"Did you put an enchantment on them?" Jamie pressed.

Ladie hesitated. "When I was younger I—I expect you two know all about the wizarding world?" Jamie and Enjore nodded. "Well, when I was twelve, I was cleaning Madam Cox's room. I found her wand."

"Madam Cox is a witch?" Jamie asked incredulously.

"As are Master and Madam Alden and a few others including myself, but please let me finish. We'll never get anywhere if you keep asking questions. There's time for those later.

"Anyway, as I was saying, I found her wand. It was stupid. I thought it was just a stick she carried in by accident. When I threw it out the window, though, sparks flew out of the tip of it. 'What an incredible stick!' I thought. I had no idea about its true power. I went out to the gnome garden to show them, since they seemed like little friends to me when there was no one I could play with. I just wanted to show them, but…I really don't know what I did. I was messing around with it. I didn't intend to do them any harm, really. I just pointed the thing at them and started pronouncing some words I'd heard Madam Alden saying before in her room. It was utter nonsense to me, but suddenly a flash of blue sparks came from the tip of the wand and hit the group of gnomes. I thought it was neat until I heard a popping sound at the gate.

"I was afraid I had done something awful as I watched a man in black robes appear out of seemingly nowhere and rush towards me. He grabbed me by the arm and told me my absence from school did not make it legal to preform spells. I still had the trace. I told him that I had no idea what he was taking about, but was sorry for using the funny stick and I would put it back. He looked at me like I was alien. Weren't my parents Grace and Hal Dixon? I told him that they were until they died. He began interrogating me by asking strange questions that made no sense. After a while, he got a basic view of my life at Alden Manor and found that I had absolutely no knowledge of the wizarding world. Immediately, he apparated me to the Ministry of Magic. I was there for hours, interrogated by countless people in bizarre uniforms, forced to write on a sheet of parchment since my voice had mysteriously disappeared. Eventually, they discovered every tiny detail about Alden Manor. I was the original person that informed them about the trouble going on with veela enchantments. You may have seen something about it recently in the paper. Some of the ministry employees leaked the story to the _Daily Prophet_ and now it's all everyone is talking about.

"Anyway, the ministry department deducted that something very wrong was going on at that manor, but I had no idea what they were talking about. I thought it was perfectly normal for a girl my age to wear burlap rags, get homeschooled in a shack for a few hours, and do chores the rest of the day. Didn't all girls have veela enchantments? I wasn't allowed to mingle with village children like you were, Jamie. The rules were stricter nine years ago. I was lucky if a child waved to me as they passed the manor in a car.

"The ministry employees were interested to hear what I had to say about females who turned seventeen. They decided that moving into the manor must've been some initiation into whatever the Aldens had going on there. By the time it was nine, I was settled down and informed about the wizarding world, that both my parents were wizards, and that I would be going to a school called Hogwarts from now on. I was rather excited to learn all this while still staying a bit bewildered, but, remember, I knew practically nothing about the outside word, so I was happy to accept any information they threw at me.

"The plan was to wait until I was old enough to move into the manor and the Aldens shared their secrets with me. Until then, though, I needed to stay at the manor while the Aldens remained oblivious to my knowing of the wizarding world. The only question was how would I attend Hogwarts and still remain at the manor? A professor at the school knew the answer. The ministry had shot her down on an offer she'd made for a branch of study she called 'sleep surrogating', and now called her in to see if the method might help. They immediately forged the connection in my mind for this technique that could've been extremely dangerous. The professor had just barely finished developing it. Sure enough, though, the method worked. I was able to be in two places at once. I was the original sleep surrogate."


	18. Love Interrogation

Chapter 18-Love Interrogation

Jamie stared in awe. Enjore had never heard of Alden Manor before the gnomes and, in only ten minutes, she had learned that Jamie once lived there and the first ever sleep surrogate was created to be a twelve-year-old agent, so the ministry could monitor a manor with the veela enchantments everyone was talking about. Jamie could hardly imagine how Enjore was trying to process all this.

After a brief pause, Ladie continued. "As you know, Jamie, we don't get very much sleep at the manor, but the ministry seemed to have a much simpler explanation for that than the schooling issue. They simply gave me a potion, telling me to go about my business on the manor as I always did, and not be worried when odd things began happening to me. Sure enough, I fainted mid-day and a doctor came to see me. He told Madam Cox that I had a rare condition that wasn't life threatening and required no medication, just ten hours of sleep each day. Of course, that doctor was actually an auror. The added sleep gave me enough time during the day at Hogwarts to attend my classes and actually socialize with other students, something I'd never been able to do before."

Ladie sighed. "I know that was more than you asked for, but you need to know everything. Your leaving the manor could put us all in danger. If Madam Alden thinks you ran away to Hogwarts…But you did! You're sleep surrogating right now!"

The pair nodded. "I was just curious as to whether or not it was you who put that enchantment on the gnomes," Jamie said. "It banished them from the yard and made them smarter. The school's keeping it confidential until they learn more. That's why you haven't heard from them all this time."

"It does make sense. As much as I would like to catch up with you more, Jamie, we can only afford necessary information. I need to tell you not to try and contact any of us at the manor from the school. The owl will be too noticeable and Madam Alden reads all the mail."

"It's too late! I sent one without knowing about the impending danger two weeks into the school year."

"Can you intercept it now?" Ladie asked urgently.

Jamie looked to Enjore. "We won't know until we try," Enjore said. "We'll have to move forward to the day after my birthday, though."

"When's your birthday, Enjore?"

"September twelfth."

"Maybe I'll send you a gift," she mused.

"A sneakoscope would be nice," Enjore smiled broadly.

"Ladie,"Jamie said. "Before we go, do you mind buying us some invisible ink, black parchment, and owl's blood?"

"What? Why?"

* * *

Jamie and Enjore swirled into shack number two on the morning after Enjore's birthday. Jamie glanced out the window just in time to spot a gliding, fluffy bird in the distance. Jamie raised her wand. "Don't!" Enjore stopped her. "Even if we are in a dream state, it's still illegal to use magic underage. We can interact with the actual world, so the trace is active here. It's still dark, so I doubt the owl will be spotted. Probably, no one's even awake yet. We should get Ladie to help us."

"But she's gone half the time, there's no guarantee she'll be there. Someone might wake up if we make too much noise."

"It was riskier when it was light out before, yet I followed you upstairs, knowing we could be caught. There's much less hazard in this venture. We're better off finding out if Ladie's around. Your brother might call out if he wakes up and finds us here." Jamie agreed and they found the door locked. Cautiously, Jamie knocked using her gentlest hand.

"Who's there?" a female voice whispered from across the wood.

"Jamie and Enjore," Jamie said.

"Prove it." Prove it? How? Why? What was the purpose? She knew it was her. Ladie could recognize her voice well enough.

"What?"

"PROVE IT." She said more distinctly and on edge.

Jamie didn't know what to do. for some reason, she needed to convince Ladie that it was her. She thought about the process of writing a return letter to her brother. What did only the two of them know? That's when she remembered. Of course! She cleared her throat and sang:

"When I die, a tree will be erected

Right above where I lie so I'll always be pro-"

The door opened quick and suddenly to reveal a tall blonde in a crimson dress. "I'm convinced," she conceded, ushering them into the room. "I'm sorry, but things around here have tightened up more than you know. You could've been anyone."

"How?"

"Polyjuice Potion," Enjore responded. "It can turn you to anyone so long as you have their DNA."

Enjore nodded. "Things are a tad unstable at Alden Manor now and, well, I assume they don't suspect me, but I urged Ben to rat me as a traitor."

"What?" Jamie asked incredulously. "Why?!"

"Simple. He's always been a bit over the top with that sort of thing. Him calming down with the added pressure around here wouldn't make much sense, now would it? The very notion of Ben suspecting me just threw the thought of my treason out of the Aldens' minds. The plan worked on that range, but it backfired and your brothers are under a concealed investigation. They think I'm hiding something about them because we're friends, so they've been trying to weasel information out of me. If they only knew." A smile crept up her lips as she pushed back her lengthy hair.

Ladie quickly followed them to the shack where the owl sat perched on the windowsill, hooting softly. "Silencio." Ladie whispered, rendering the owl silent, so it would not wake Ben. She directed the same spell toward Ben and shook him to get him up. Opening his eyes, he was confused to find Ladie standing over him and even more befuddled when he realized he had no voice and his long lost sister and a stranger was standing in shack number two, feeding an owl on the windowsill. Ladie explained to Ben that Jamie was not back and that he should tell no one of her presence here. Jamie told Ben how to work the secret writing process and he explained to her that he would inform her to send the letter by Christmas because that was the one day he was allowed to go to the village and he would intercept the owl there. Ladie requested that they leave while she informed Ben of the rest of the situation. Jamie could not know everything happening at Alden Manor at the present time.

"We have to go anyway," Enjore said. "We've been gone for longer than we should. A few hours at least. Let's go, Jamie. Taking Enjore's outstretched arm, she saw the world around her swirl until it became utter darkness. Her body felt ice cold once again until her temperature slowly started to rise. She felt like a melting ice cube. Jamie could move again. Patting her hand against the ground, she could feel the fabric beneath her hand…Fabric? Wasn't she on the floor before?

Jamie opened her eyes to find that she was lying in a white bed in the hospital wing. "Madam Quigley! They're up…at the exact same time for some reason!" Diana's voice proclaimed. Madam Quigley hurried over to the bed next to Jamie and she turned her head to see Enjore's perplexed face as Madam Quigley poured a cup of orange syrup and forced Enjore to drink it.

"There we go!" she chimed. "We had to wait until the two of you woke up before giving you this. I was starting to think you were in comas what with all the sleep you seemed to need."

"Why are we here?" Enjore asked. Jamie was a little disappointed to find that her voice was, once again, muted.

"We saw Jamie shivering on the floor when we got into the common room and figured he must've fainted, so we went to get Enjore and found her in the same condition," Diana winked. They'd found Jamie by Enjore's bedside, obviously. They were just trying to conceal Jamie's identity as a girl since there are spells against the boys entering the girls' dorms. "We brought the two of you here."

"Not fevers, just a lack of sleep, in my opinion. Possibly, you two haven't eaten enough. Drink those and the two of you will be free to go." Madam Quigley said. The girls chugged the contents of their cups and slid out of bed.

"How long have we been asleep?" Enjore yawned.

"Over two hours," Diana said. "Are you guys okay?"

Jamie and Enjore looked at each other momentarily and smiled. "Yeah," Enjore replied, "we're just fine."

* * *

Jamie and Enjore begged the girls to wait until Easter for their sleepover. They were a bit worn out from their adventure and thought that siting in a circle while girls pressured you to share your secrets with them wasn't the best idea just yet. Diana was a bit disappointed, but agreed.

As January rolled around, the snow began to build outside and it was exhausting just walking to the Herbology greenhouses to learn about the few plants that survived through the winter. Walking through the halls, Jamie could sense a physical downfall in emotions. While the Christmas season had kept everyone perked up in the start of winter, the students couldn't hide from the dreary weather forever.

Most of the couples that Jamie had seen under the mistletoe a few weeks prior were now either laying on the couch with their lovers or had none at all. Jamie was surprised to see intense and heated relationships cool down with the weather. She had never really cared to pay attention to these pairs before Christmas, but since everyone had returned from break, she kept a close eye on the people she had seen together, either holding each other or never in one another's presence anymore, making sneering or embarrassed faces every time they caught one another's glance. She wondered what had happened to them. How could someone be so happy one minute and so miserable the next? Jamie knew there was a definite connection, she just couldn't figure out what it was. A boy and girl would be together, smiling constantly and then when they were apart, they looked as if they wanted to cry. Why was that?

Jamie tried to think about feeling bad when someone she knew wasn't around, but the only thought in mind came from when her mother left. She'd cried after learning that there was no longer anyone there to hug her before going to bed or tell her stories or tell Jamie that she loved her. Love. Yes, that sounded right. Perhaps these people who hang their arms off each other and try to eat each other's lips loved each other. For some reason, though, they could not be together.

Jamie looked down at the letter she was writing to her brother.

Dear blonde beauty,

Send this note to my 15-yr.-old pain.

Sometimes, I wish I could go back in time. I think it will only ever be possible in my dreams, though. When do you think you will next see an owl? I remember you telling me about that rare sight in the village on the day after "The Crazed" left and was wondering when you will next be there. Perhaps you will see another! Also, my studies are going well with my birthday coming soon. I have been enlightened by the "sleeping girl" as you requested and strive to understand more.

-your soon to be twelve shortie

Jamie paused. There was something else she had been meaning to ask , but wasn't sure if she should. Taking a deep breath she scribbled a last question onto the black parchment.

P.S. Do you love me?

After sending away her letter with an odd feeling in her stomach, Jamie thought about those couples. She knew none of them, otherwise she would've asked them about love as she did with the gnomes. She wanted enough feedback, so she could form her own hypothesis on the matter. Who did she know that she could ask? Once again, she decided to try Vannozza.

_Do you love anyone?_

A girl Vannozza had been chatting with giggled. "First years are so cute!"

Vannozza ignored her. "Love? Like, platonically?"

_What does that mean?_

"It means non-romantically. It comes from the ancient Greek philosopher, Plato. Basically, when you love someone platonically, you don't think about their physical appearance or how attracted to them you are. When it comes to the opposite sex, I mean. It's like loving a relative or friend. It's a love free from all sensual desire. The way I love my mom or Leo. Get it?"

Jamie nodded. _Platonically is when you fancy someone non-physically while romantically is when you eat their face._

Vannozza ogled the message for a moment and then burst out laughing. "You mean snogging? Yes, I suppose that's the simplified way of putting it."

Jamie read over her message. Had she misspelled something? What was so funny? She tried replacing "eat" with "snog" and showed Billie and Vannozza. Billie erased the "their face." "It's, kind of, implied by the word 'snog'," she explained.

Vannozza said she loved her mom and Leo platonically. Did it have to work both ways? _Does your mom and Leo love you? _She asked.

"Yes… I mean, Leo's platonic, of course," Vannozza added quickly.

_How do you know?_

She stared at the message for a minute, thinking. "Well, I guess, I don't, really. He could love me romantically or not at all. You just have to have faith in your heart that the person you love feels the same way about you. Right now, no girl will ever know if Leo fancies him because he's too scared to tell them the way he feels." She lowered her voice, ducking away from her friend. "Between you and me, he's been interested girls since he was your age, but never had the courage to ask a single one on a date. He's a cool guy, just afraid of rejection. Perhaps if there were a potion to give him courage, I'd slip some to him one day. Too bad Felix Felicis is terrible expensive. Anyway," she said, straightening. "Is that all?"

Jamie nodded and Billie followed her out of the dimly lit Ravenclaw common room. "Where are we going now?" Billie asked. Jamie ignored her. Why did people always ask her questions when her board wasn't out? At least with Enjore, she had a stable method of communication through hand gestures wich they were both steadily improving at. To answer Billie's question, they were going to see if Leo felt the same way about Vannozza as she did him. Love was so complicated!

Jamie tapped Leo on the shoulder as he sat at the Gryffindor lunch table with Ravenclaws, Gryffindors, and Hufflepuffs alike. He seemed to be quite a popular person. "Hm?" He turned around to face Jamie, looking her over confusedly until he saw the message.

_Are you in love with Vannozza?_

The pumpkin juice in Leo's mouth was spattered all over Jamie's face and washed the letters off her board. She stuck her tongue out to lick the delicious juice. "Gross, Jamie!" Billie wailed. Billie wiped down the board while Jamie took care of her own face.

"Sorry about that," Leo said as his friends howled with laughed in the background. "I just wasn't expecting the question. Don't you think that's a bit personal?" Jamie cocked her head to the side peculiarly. Of course it was personal. Didn't he know that himself? Why would he ask such an odd question? "Why do you ask?" He filled his mouth with more pumpkin juice. Jamie hoped he didn't spray her again.

_I need to know if love works from both ends._

Leo swallowed his juiced unusually and unnaturally fast. It sounded as if air bubbles were uncomfortably being forced down his throat. "Why?!" He breathed. "Did-did she say something about me?!" Jamie scowled. He wasn't answering her questions at all! It was obvious she was not going to get anything from this thick boy, so she stowed her board away and motioned Billie to follow her as she refused to answer. "DID SHE?!" he asked desperately from somewhere behind them. Jamie did not look back.

_Consider this you punishment for getting my face and board sticky._


	19. The Bet

Chapter 19-The Bet

It was potions class during early March. Jamie had just finished her potion and awaited the teacher's approval. She had never done such a complex mixture, but she expected there would be more to come since they were getting older now. Professor Douglas frowned as he stared into the pots of each person. Jamie was a bit disappointed when his expression didn't wave at her cauldron. She had worked hard on it.

"Er…I'm a bit disappointed. It appears at only Miss. Philips and Mr. Abney have made the potion correc—"

"WOOHOO!" Billie shouted, punching the air, and then smoothing back her short, blonde hair. "Heh. Yeah, I know I'm amazing. No need to tell me."

Professor Douglas sighed, used to Billie's antics. "Would the two of you please bring you vials to the front of the room?"

"Yes, sir!" Billie acclaimed enthusiastically. She hopped around her desk and sprung to the front of the room while Arcturus dallied behind. As Arcturus made his way to the step where Professor Douglas's desk was, Billie was just coming down, slipped on the step, and fell. Jamie watched with fascination as everyone in the room, with the exception of Enjore, stared at Billie's faceplant with Arcturus. "Sorry," Billie said casually, groping Arturus's frozen shoulders. She pried herself out of his arms, relieving him of a wobbling stance and bounced back to her seat, everyone one goggling, wide-eyed, at Arcturus, frozen in place.

"Mr. Abney? Your potion?" Professor Douglas said impatiently.

"Y-y-y-y-yes, s-s-sir." Arcturus stumbled on the step and retreated back to his seat, looking a bit shaken, while Billie didn't seem to notice at all.

"I can't believe you!" Diana shouted at Billie once they got to lunch. "How could you snog Arcturus!"

"Ut, oh. Lover's spat," Roscoe chuckled to Francis.

"I didn't kiss Arcturus!" Billie defended.

"Oh, so your lips pressing against his was just to swat a fly on his face then, was it?" Diana fumed.

"No, I fell on him. What does it matter? Why do you care so much?"

"Do you know how many galleons I would pay to snog Arturus Abney? He's the cutest boy in the year!"

"Hey!" Rush said "What about me?"

Diana looked him over as if decided whether or not to give money to a vagrant. "Err…I'm going to have to go with Enjore on this one. The hair is a bit too much."

"You're all just jealous," he pouted.

"Fine, you can have him. Just go up to him and ask for one. I'm sure he won't mind."

"Are you mental, Billie! He's way too cool. I could never."

"I happen to be a very good looking, well groomed chap," Rush persisted.

Billie shrugged. "You're better off, anyway. His breath was awful. Smelled like he made an occupation out of eating garlic. And I think he puts on Chap Stick," Billie giggled. "His lips tasted like cinnamon."

"You could _taste_ them?!" Diana asked with wide eyes. "Oh, why does this happen to the one girl who doesn't care?! Why?!"

"Should _I _wear Chap Stick?" Rush wondered aloud. "Bindi Goddess, do you refuse to go with me because my lips aren't flavored?"

"No, I refuse to go out with you because you talk like a child," Enjore said.

"Fair enough. I'll win you over eventually. Perhaps my struggle through Lent will persuade you."

"I'm not sure if you've noticed, but Indians aren't traditionally Christian. Meaning, we don't celebrate Lent."

"Lent?" Roscoe asked before Jamie had finished writing out her question. "What in the name of Merlin is that?"

"A Catholic tradition," he explained. "You give something up that's extremely important to you for forty days."

"Please tell me it's going to be your hair," Enjore joked.

"We should all give up something!" Diana said, excited. "That way we can see who lasts longest. It'll be fun!"

"Can I give up potions?" Roscoe asked.

"No, Roscoe, it has to be a sacrifice."

"I'll feed Francis to the gnomes," he smiled.

"I'll give up pumpkin juice," Diana said.

"You know, guys," Billie said, leaning into the table. "We could take Diana's wager and up the stakes a bit." The boys perked up, scooting into Jamie to hear Billie better, suddenly interested. "We could each give up something that we think we absolutely can't live without."

"What happens if one of us doesn't make it 'till the end of Lent?" Enjore asked.

"Well, if you lose, you have to kiss Arcturus Abney."

Diana breathed in fast. "No! Billie!"

"If you don't like it, Diana, we're not forcing you to take the bet." The table looked at Diana who sighed and hung her head, sticking with the group. "Good."

"W-w-wait," Francis interrupted. "W-what happens if a boy loses?"

Billie smiled. "He has to kiss Arcturus Abney, of course." At that moment, the girls broke out laughing while the boys became seriously freaked.

"Hold on!" Roscoe said. "We have to snog a _boy_? That's so unfair! It'll be practically nothing for you girls."

"Are you kidding me?!" Diana shouted at him. "I can't snog Arcturus Abney! That would be a nightmare…and a dream. I could never! I'd rather snog a girl!"

"See?" Billie said smugly. "Just as bad for us as it is for you. Look at the face Jamie's making. She doesn't want to eat from some random boy's face."

"Eat from his face?"

"It's a long story. Are you guys in or not?"

Roscoe thought for a moment while the other boys watched his process. "Well, I guess it's not really a gamble," he said. "All I have to do is keep without whatever I give up for forty days. Plus, I'd really like to see one of you guys kiss Abney. Alright," he said, rubbing his hands together. "I'll do it on one condition."

"What?" Billie asked excitedly.

"You've already kissed Arcturus Abney, Billie, and you hardly cared. We need something that'll really embarrass you."

"If you think I'm running around the school naked—"

"Oh, god no!" he shuddered. "That'd make us all want to cut our eyes out." The group laughed while Billie scowled.

"I will have you know that all of this," Billie gestured to her body, "will, one day, be prime real estate."

"And, until then, you can keep you clothes on. Let's see…What's going to get to Billie? You have to kiss a seventh year!"

Billie froze "W-WHAT?! B-but I'm only twelve and he'll be at least seventeen if not older! That's just wrong!" She stopped, suddenly smiling smugly. "Well played, Roscoe. You've got yourself a deal. The rest of you in?" The group nodded. "Alrighty, then. Everybody meet here Wednesday for lunch and we'll write down what everyone's given up. No cheating out on us, boys! It won't be any fun if no one confesses to losing." The group nodded. Jamie was smiling. She could tell that this was going to be fun to watch.

Jamie stopped to think for a minute. What should she give up? There wasn't much she had in the first place. The only sacrifice she could think of would be to stop watching the sunrise each morning and she didn't view that as being an extreme habit. Just more of a tradition she enjoyed. Sometimes she'd sleep in and miss the sunrise, so she knew she was fine without it. What would be sacrificial? She thought she would ask Enjore. Taking out her board, Jamie froze. Her dry-erase board! Of course! She used it every day and couldn't imagine how hard it would be to go without it for six weeks. Her teachers usually didn't call on Jamie, anyway considering they hated waiting for her to write on her board, so she would just use some scrap parchment if they decided to call on her. How would she communicate regularly, though? Only she and Enjore ever used sign language. Jamie stayed firm. It was about time her friends learned SEE as well. She smiled. Some good actually might come from this bet.


	20. Lent

Chapter 20-Lent

"Pumpking Juice," Diana told Billie.

"B-b-berton Stevenson," Tyler stuttered. Jamie had no idea who that was, but everyone else seemed to be familiar with him because they didn't question this.

"I'm going to stop carrying Oofles around everywhere," Billie sighed. An albino ferret circled her neck and touched its small front hands to Billie's cheek in disappointment.

"I'm going to stop burning incense," Enjore announced.

"Thank Gandalf!" Billie shouted.

"I kind of like it," Diana admitted.

Jamie held up her board and drew an imaginary "x" across the front, stowing it back in her bag. "You're giving up your board?" Enjore asked. "That's going to be tough on everyone, Jamie. You sure?"

She nodded.

"Pudding," Francis said regretfully.

Roscoe smiled. "Braiding Rush's hair."

"Roscoe…" Diana rolled her eyes. "If you're going to be this way—"

"Alright! Alright…Romance novels."

"ROSCOE!"

"FINE! Geez, people. Take a joke. Making fun of Victoria Spinler," he sighed.

"That's so mean!"

"Roscoe," Enjore interjected. "That's a little vague. You can't talk to her at all."

"WHAT?!"

"I've seen you around that girl. No talking to her or pick something else."

"Oh, fine."

Rush unlaced his fingers behind his head when the group looked to him. "Coconut conditioner."

"DUDE!" Billie shouted, frustrated. "You're the one who originally got us into this Lent idea and you're not taking it seriously?!"

"I am too! Do you know how wonderful that conditioner makes me smell?" Jamie couldn't help herself. She leaned over and whiffed a lovely, creamy scent emanating from Rush's hair. The group stared at her for a moment until everyone had smelled Rush's hair. "It's divine, right?" he smiled.

Diana sighed. "Let him give up the conditioner."

"All conditioner," Billie pressed.

"NO!" Rush's hands flew to his shoulder-length brown hair. "My mane will perish!"

"Your _mane_?" Enjore said incredulously.

"All conditioner," Billie persisted. "Be lucky I don't throw in shampoo."

"NO! Not my shampoo! Okay, okay. No conditioner."

Over the next four weeks, Jamie heard more complaining than she'd ever heard from the first year Ravenclaws. Diana could constantly be seen staring at a cup of pumpkin juice longingly, but choked down water, instead. Francis completely left the table during desert each time pudding magically appeared. Rush's "mane" continued to grow more greasy and knotted each time she saw it. Enjore no longer smelled of rich spices and looked stressed and unfocused constantly, her hands twitching more often than before. Jamie noticed her new acute fascination with tea and gum and heard from Diana that she could occasionally be seen smelling her clothes for signs of her incense like third hand smoke. She regretted to say that she had everything in Enjore's trunk washed for her and got into a row with Enjore for it.

Whenever Jamie was standing with Roscoe outside of Herbology, which they had with the Slitherins, Roscoe would have a glint in his eye when he saw Victoria. Upon opening his mouth, Jamie would tug his sleeve to remind him that any harsh comments directed towards her would result in him snogging Arcturus Abney.

Billie looked lonely. She could constantly be seen patting down parts of her clothing, looking for Oofles. She wasn't the best at socializing so she spent most of her new time following Jamie or trying to get in on one of Roscoe and Francis's practical jokes.

Tyler would sometimes start humming and be whacked over the top of the head with a book by one of the boys. "Mate," Roscoe said one day, "you have a serious problem."

Jamie would periodically find herself playing charades with her friends whenever Enjore wasn't around to translate for them. They were slowly learning various signs, often frustrated, but the Great Hall or anyone walking past in the hallway seemed to think the whole thing was very entertaining.

Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap…

"WHAT THE BLOODY HELL IS THAT NOISE?" Jamie heard Roscoe holler, infuriated. Jamie glanced at her alarm clock. It was ten minutes to three in the morning. She hadn't even heard the noise until Roscoe woke her up. A tiny light flared in the darkness and Jamie could see Roscoe's silhouette rising from bed.

"Roscoe?" a groggy voice asked. "Where are you going?"

"Where do you think?! To find out what the bloody hell that noise is!"

"Mmmm…forget it. Just wait until it goes away."

"It's been like that for four hours!"

"Come back to bed."

"Francis, if you ever say that again, you'll find that you physically won't be able to talk from your lack of teeth."

"W-w-well, now that I'm up," Tyler said, stripping off his clothes in the shadows of the room. "M-m-m-might as w-well c-c-come along." Jamie rose. She went to sleep early that night, anyway. She'd had enough rest and didn't want to miss out on looking for the mysterious taping sound.

"No, guys," Rush said. "No, stay here. Don't go…"

"If you don't want to come, you don't have to," Roscoe sounded from the darkness. "I know how much Princess Rodney needs her beauty sleep."

"I hate you."

Soon, all of the boys and Jamie were standing in the wet, morning grass. Jamie could hardly believe that they weren't caught. Not even Peeves was out this morning, looking for trouble. Tap, tap, tap, tap. There was the noise again. Jamie felt a little like she was on a wild goose chase. It was actually quite funny. The boys would hear the mysterious tapping sound and get all excited; charging after where they thought it had come from and then it would suddenly stop. They had already circled the school once and were coming up to the Whomping Willow again. Roscoe was getting frustrated. Jamie hated seeing him angry, but, technically, she couldn't actually see him in the darkness.

"This is bloody insane! Where is that noise coming from! We just wasted an hour trying to find it!"

"Wasted?" Rush frowned. "I quite enjoyed the walk. Why would you think spending any time with me would be a waste?"

"You're starting to sound like a casual Billie," Francis warned.

"Quiet," Tyler whispered, grabbing Roscoe and Jamie's arms. "Listen to that." The group silenced immediately. Tap, tap, tap. Jamie could hear the tapping noise again. "It's c-c-coming from over there." Jamie could hardly see where he was pointing, but she could distinctly tell that it was coming from her left. The darkness stretched out before them with nothing but the tapping noise to guide their way. Jamie stepped into the abyss. She grabbed at someone's robes for stability as she ventured forward and whoever was there didn't care to object.

She could hear her own footsteps and the person she was holding onto's, but that was it. She had no idea what had become of the other three. Jamie walked a bit faster, confident that the tapping noise was just within her reach until she felt a stab of pain in her right side. Something big, like a log or club, propelled her off of her feet and sent a jolt of blistering pain through her ribcage and stomach. Grabbing whatever hit her with all her might while hanging tight to the robes she had a hold of, she was sent flying, circling, swirling, diving, swung left and right. It made her dizzy and want to barf. Over the air whipping past, she could distinctly hear the sound of a deep-throat screaming. That wasn't right, though. She didn't have a voice. Suddenly, she felt her load of fabric become extremely light and she brought the abandoned robes to her face. Whoever had been wearing these must've also let the screams loose from their mouth like hounds from a kennel. Now that there was nothing heavy on the opposite side of the tree, she felt herself falling, air rushing freely through her clothes and hair until she was slammed onto what felt like concrete until she realized it was nothing more than soft grass.

Trying to regain her bearings, she ran to the base of the tree, sure that trying to escape the way she had come would be utter suicide. It was now clear that she had stumbled onto the territory of the Whomping Willow and dragged whoever she held the robes of now, with her. Suddenly, a groan echoed from a meter away. Inching along the roused tree's trunk, Jamie quickly found that there was a stairway leading down from a hole in the base of the tree. Had this always been there? Jamie gingerly stepped downward, knowing that it was unwise to venture twice into mystical darkness. The groan came again, clearer this time, only centimeters from her feet. It sounded human. She bent down, touching a fabric chest.

"Erm…who is it? Hello?" It was Roscoe. Jamie grabbed his hand and brought him up, noticing that her glasses were no longer on her head as they should have been. She would have to retrieve them later. Jamie was lucky the sun hadn't risen yet, otherwise, Roscoe would've spotted her sex in an instant. "Jamie? If that's you, pat me on the head." Jamie groped his neck until she found his head, but did not get the chance to pat it before he was convinced that it was her. "Where do you think this place leads…er…nevermind. Sorry, just…thinking out loud. C'mon." Jamie heard footsteps trail down the narrow passageway. They were just abandoning Francis, Rush, and Tyler? It didn't sound smart, but she followed him, nonetheless, dropping his robes at the entrance.

The passage seemed to stretch so far that Jamie wondered if there was an end to it at all. She now realized how tired she was from waking up so early and walking for an hour. Now, for an unmeasured amount of time, she was following an egotist through a mysterious secret passage under a killer tree. Of all the things Jamie had expected to happen today, this was not on the list. Jamie eventually bumped a soft body in front of her, nearly tripping over his crouched form. "There's a door here," he said.

"NEVER!" The voice was shrill and feminine, leaking through the door, yet clear and undistorted. "SHE IS TOO YOUNG! Are we now taking them from the crib?! This is madness!"

"Calm down, Algieba," a flat male voice sounded. "We only take those who are ready and she is ready. I have observed the girl for some time now."

"Rasalas, wait until she graduates. Then, we may use her to our disposal."

"Wrong. She is more valuable us while she attends Hogwarts. She will be a valuable asset in our plans to overthrow the headmaster." Jamie took a silent, but quick and deep breath in, the cool, musty air pinching her chest. The headmaster? Richard Darby? What did they want with him? Who were these people? What was this place?

"I agree with Rasalas, Algieba," a second female voice announced. "The girl is, indeed, at a ripe age which must be utilized to our advantage."

"Silence, Adhafera!" Algieba hissed. "You have no say in this matter! Crawl back into the hole that viviblix dug you out of!"

"I am not of the same as Lupin! She has been temporarily animated while I am awakened once more. You know that better than anyone."

The voice paused before continuing. "I still do not see why we couldn't have used her insolent husband!"

"Algieba!" Rasalas's voice sneered. "You know how dangerous a werewolf body could be! Should it transform at the full moon by accident, it could re-awaken and destroy us all! A metamorphus is much more useful. Besides, we need to focus on the matter at hand. The girl seems frightfully aware. If we don't make our presence known soon, she could find out for herself and reveal us. We must act now!"

"The bite transforms a stable bond through the mind. She will never overcome my narcoblix powers as long as she remains asleep."

"Asleep, she has the power to awaken," Adhafera reminded Algieba.

"Very well," Algieba sighed.

Jamie carefully scooted next to Roscoe to view a pair of feet walking across the room until they disappeared from sight. She needed a better view! Jamie carefully turned the handle to the door as Roscoe looked at her incredulously. Was she really doing this? Holding her breath, Jamie slid the door open a crack, wide enough to see an open room, lit and warmed by a fireplace. A male and a female paced the wooden floors while a taller female with long, shaggy hair sat next to a hunched figure, tied to the accompanying chair with her hand dangling limply. The figure in the chair had two visible holes in the side of her exposed arm, dark and grey around the edges. The man stalked to the fire and flicked his wand, tossing another log into place. For an instant, in the flash of sparks, Jamie could make out the victim's face clearly. Thin and tan with striking features sat Vannozza Maggadino.


	21. Escape

Chapter 21-Escape

Jamie let out an inner cry. Vannozza was captured by these…who were these people? They said something about a metamorphus, a viviblix, and a narcoblix, but what was all of that? Jamie had never heard any of those words. The one thing she did know was that Vannozza was in imminent danger. She could never take on three people with just Roscoe at her side. They were fully grown and greater in number. She and Roscoe would have to find a way out and get help.

She tapped Roscoe on the shoulder and motioned for him to look through the door's crack. Moving in his squat, Roscoe peeped through door and squeezed his eyes to slits. He couldn't see her face! Jamie was stuck at an impasse. If she used the board stowed safely in her burlap bag, she would have to eat Arcturus Abney's lips, but, if she didn't, something terrible would surely happen to Vannozza. She tapped Roscoe's shoulder and he turned to her. She started making exaggerated movements with her thumbs toward the exit, mouthing _Vannozza, Francis's sister, _and _danger_ the entire time. Roscoe just shook his head. He couldn't see what she was doing. It was dark and the cracks in the door didn't provide enough light.

Jamie sighed and took out her board, reluctantly writing the message. This was an emergency, right? It definitely wouldn't count towards the bet. Jamie wrote. _Vannozza is tied down to a chair in the room. We need to leave and get help._ Jamie lit her wand, so he could see and Roscoe seemed to understand, nodding with wide eyes. He motioned for them to leave as Jamie put her board away, but not before a voice called out from the room.

"RASALAS!" Algieba called. "Look! A white light! WHO'S THERE?!"

Jamie and Roscoe booked it down the passage as fast as they could, but the three wizards clearly had the upper hand. Not far down the passage, Jamie heard Rasalas shout an inaudible spell to Jamie and she felt a leathery length of fabric entwine her ankles. Her face planted into the ground and Roscoe locked his fingers around her wrists in an attempt to retrieve her. One of her wrists was let free and Roscoe shouted into the black air. "INCIDERE!" Nothing happened. The leather tightened around her ankles as the steps echoed further toward them. "INCIDERE!" Suddenly, she was free. He'd hit the leather, but, though there was no longer anything tugging at her, she was still bound at the ankles. Taking out her own wand, she thought the same spell and the side of her shoe spit open, leaving a gash down the side of her foot, but it didn't matter. The spell had also cut the leather straps. She could at least run now.

Red light flashed all around them and a stitch worked its way into Jamie's side. She'd never had to run so much! She could hear Roscoe's heavy breaths in front of her. He had longer legs and could probably outdistance her any day. He was staying behind for her. So maybe he wasn't so selfish after all.

Jamie constantly felt herself ducking from stunning spells and throwing her own over her shoulder to send out flashes of blue. It was a small passage, but she and Roscoe were only eleven while their pursuers were fully grown. Roscoe shouted a disarming spell and she heard a shout of fury. Jamie found herself blocking spells for the two constantly until one of Roscoe's stunning spells seemed to have hit the second pursuer as they heard him topple to the ground. Adhafera must've stayed behind to watch over Vannozza. Jamie grabbed Roscoe's arm and dragged him to the ground, encouraging him to be silent despite how severely their breaths protested, sounding loud and uneven.

A ways down the tunnel, the echo of Algieba's voice could be heard. "Rasalas?! Argh! WHERE ARE YOU, YOU TWO-FACED, GOOD FOR NOTHING, PIECE OF GOBLIN DUNG!"

"Did you hear that?" Roscoe asked. "She thinks there's only one of us because she only heard one voice. One of us should go get help while the other fights her off." Jamie thought this was absolutely insane. A first year against a fully grown wizard? How thick can you get? They needed to stay together. "You go." Was Roscoe brave or just stupid? She decided the latter. Fighting off a wizard you have no chance of surviving against while the other pointlessly tries to tackle a killer tree just made no sense. They needed a plan, not a deflation of an eleven-year-old's ego.

Jamie took a risk and slapped him straight across the face, hoping it would convey a clear enough message of what she thought about this plan. "What was that for?" For being so stuck on your pride, you can't see an escape route if it slapped you in the face. Let's go. She grabbed him by the hand and they charged down the passage. If those people wanted them, they would have to get them in the passage. Tackling them on Hogwarts grounds was too dangerous if they didn't want to be discovered. How would they get past the tree, though?

"GET BACK HERE!" Algieba screeched through the darkness. Both parties had had a rest, but the children now had the advantage. They were ahead and outnumbered the witch. The only question was how would they get past the Whomping Willow? Jamie didn't have much time to sort this question out before tripping on a set of dirt stairs.

"Here are my robes!" Roscoe said, sliding them back over his head. "Let's go." They crawled out of the hole in the base of the tree and stalked the trunk. "Er…freezing charm?" Something told Jamie that if the Whomping Willow were affected by freezing charms, the school would've known about the passage long ago. Jamie lighted her wand in time to see a branch come charging in her direction. Pushing Roscoe one way, Jamie fell the other, missing the club-like bough by centimeters. "LUMOS MAXIMA!" Roscoe shouted and the space between them and Hogwarts was suddenly cloaked in a veil of pure, white light.

"Brilliant, Roscoe!" Francis shouted from the field. "We were beginning to think that the two of you'd perished once we realized where you were! Didn't even think to pull out a spell that would make our presence known to all the teachers in the school and get us detentions for the next month for being up at this hour."

"Oh…" Roscoe trailed off, suddenly realizing what he'd just done.

The tree currently looked still, but it could attack at any moment. It was, most definitely, faster than them. Still, how else would they cross? Jamie crouched one leg against the tree and waited for a branch to sway downward. Rapidly, she pushed off the trunk, running toward the low branch and darting to the opposite side once it decided to strike, so she had a clear view of the party of boys from where she was and the nearest bough was quickly heading away from her. Jamie sprinted to the finish and landed in Tyler's arms while the rest of the boys cheered. She felt sticks of metal brush the side of her head until something rested on her ears and nose. Her glasses!

"Thank you for including me," Roscoe said sarcastically. "If I die in this, Jamie, I will personally haunt every girl you try to date until you are marked as cursed and then—"

"Get on with it!" Rush shouted impatiently. We're burning darkness here!"

Roscoe followed Jamie's tactics up until darting to the side of a low bough when a wild-eyed figure came up from the tunnel and tackled Roscoe to the ground, narrowly avoiding a club of wood that had aimed itself directly toward Roscoe. The boys jumped at Algieba's attack. She was bearing down upon Roscoe, holding a finely shaped wand to his throat.

In the light of the spell, Jamie could now see her wild eyes, smoldering in the night. Her black, lace dress was torn at the waist and her lengthy, grey hair covered most of her back. Algieba was an old woman, wrinkled and worn, yet strikingly pretty. She couldn't see a man her age rejecting her aside from her lethal personality.

Jamie tried to call out to warn her about the branch that was swinging closely towards them, but her voice wouldn't budge. It stuck in the back of her throat like peanut butter. Algieba was swiftly knocked off of her sitting position atop Roscoe and the boy did a backwards cartwheel, rolling the rest of the way towards the boys as Algieba screamed with fury. "Knox," Roscoe said and the lights went out.

"ALGIEBA!" Adhafera's voice called. "WINGRDIUM LIVIOSA!" Suddenly, there was scuffling and frantic whispers. The boys were hardly there to hear it, though. They avoided several teachers, sprinting back to their common room, and locked the door behind them as they entered their dorms.


	22. The Nerve of Victoria Spinler

Chapter 22-The Nerve of Victoria Spinler

Everyone in the room was breathing heavily. Jamie thought her heart might decide to jump out of her throat. Each beat shook her being. "Merlin's beard…" Francis huffed. "Way to bring back a crazy woman after disappearing for half an hour!"

"Who w-w-was that?" Tyler shook. "I nearly jumped out of my skin w-w-when I saw her appear."

"_You_ did?! _I_ was the one who got attacked!" Roscoe puffed. "And Jamie got hit by a tree. Look at his foot!" The group looked over to Jamie's bare right foot. The ankle cuff of her trainer and entire foot was soaked in a crimson liquid and the more the adrenaline of the chase wore off, the more she was able to feel the wound.

"W-w-w-we have to report this!" Tyler breathed.

"No way!" Roscoe objected. "Do you think I'm sitting in detentions for the rest of the year for sneaking out at night?!"

"B-b-but—"

"B-b-but WHAT!? Tyler, just shut your mouth and keep this quiet!" Roscoe shouted furiously.

"Roscoe," Rush interrupted. "I don't want to get detention either, but the people down there could be dangerous. I'm with Tyler on this one, mate. We've got to tell a teacher. A crazy woman living under a killer tree is never a good sign."

_They have Vannozza!_ Jamie wrote shakily in the messiest handwriting she'd ever seen herself make.

"Vannozza?!" Francis cried! "Roscoe, she's got my sister?!"

"There were three." Roscoe confirmed "And we don't even know if it was her. Could've been a manikin for all we know. It was dark down there. I could barely see my own fingers let alone a face five meters away."

Jamie shook her head. He hadn't seen her when the sparks went up, but Jamie had. It was most definitely Vannozza. She held her board up again and looked at the boys more intently. "Let's all just calm down," Rush resolved. "We need to get this straight and figure out exactly what happened before telling the teachers anything. Roscoe, go take a shower or something to cool down. We won't debate without you, Mate. You're just covered in dirt. We'll wait for you, don't worry."

Roscoe just grunted as if he didn't believe a word of it, but left anyway. Once the boys were sure they heard the shower running from the dorms, the got close to Jamie. "Did you really see my sister," Francis asked, "or was it like Roscoe said?" Jamie just held up the words on her board.

"You're sure?" Rush asked. Jamie nodded. Rush sighed and pushed his fingers through his hair in an attempt to calm himself down. In the heated dorm room, sweat was beginning to bead on his brow. "We can't go against what Roscoe says for the time being. He'd have a fit. Don't get me wrong, he's a good mate and all, but some things he just can't handle. We'll have to wait until classes start and stay behind to inform a teacher. Otherwise, it's too risky."

"But what about my sister?!" Francis protested.

"Francis, Vannozza can take care of herself. Even if we did inform the teachers, by the time we got there, it'd be too late were they intending on harming her. Did they say anything about it, Jamie?"

She shook her head. _They said she was an asset_, Jamie wrote.

Rush nodded his head. "Like I said, Vannozza can take care of herself. Didn't you say the other day that she'd learned how to use a patronus to send a message, Francis?"

"Well, yes, but—"

"The first adult we should see should be Madam Quigley for Jamie's foot."

Francis sighed as he looked at the blood slowly hardening on Jamie's ankle and nodded.

The boys had left a note for Roscoe and served as crutches to get to Madam Quigley, bumping into several awakening professors on the way, merely showing them the blood on Jamie's hands and fleeing to the hospital wing. The story was that she'd cut herself preforming a slicing a charm to get rid of the ropes the boys had tied her in as a practical joke. The boys got thirty points taken away from Ravenclaw, but it was better that way seeing as randomly cutting her foot on a bed post would've been a bit suspicious. This way, nothing was questioned. Upon returning to the common room, the three boys froze when they saw a winsome girl sitting on the couch near the fire embers.

"Oh, hello," she smiled. "I'm just finishing an essay for Defense Against the Dark Arts. What are you three doing up so late? Sneaking off into the castle? No. You've got a note. What is it, then? You look like you've seen a ghost…er…perhaps I've spoken too soon. There are ghosts here, aren't there?" The three just stared. She was here, in the common room. And Jamie had been so sure she'd seen her!

"Er…Vannozza," Francis started. "Nothing…strange, per say, has happened to you tonight, has it?"

"Strange? No. Not aside from that tapping noise outside. Kept me up for hours. That's why I'm here now. If I didn't care about my reputation as a prefect, I would've run out there myself to see what all that racket was." The boys and Jamie swerved their eyes awkwardly.

"So, you were up all night with no chance of drifting off, so a person could kidnap you in the night?"

Vannozza ogled them. "Are you boys feeling alright? You're acting awfully odd." They nodded uncomfortably and traipsed back towards their dorms.

"Guys, we've got to keep this secret until we figure out what's going on," Rush said. "I am not sleeping in the same room as a Roscoe who's out to get me for getting him in detention." The group didn't object. "Well, at least one good thing came out of all this." The group looked over at his smiling face. "Jamie has to snog Arcturus Abney."

* * *

"You'll have to do it after Easter, when Lent is over," Diana explained to a miserable Jamie as she, Jamie, Francis, and Roscoe made their way to Herbology that morning. "That way, if anyone else fails, all the losses can be cashed in at once. It'll be easier that way. Arcturus won't see it coming." Jamie sighed. She had to snog Arcturus Abney. She'd have to eat his lips like those couples did under the mistletoe during Christmas. She shuttered at the thought as they came up to a group of Slytherins.

"Well, look who it is!" a voice chimed from the crowd. Out stepped a dark-haired Slitherin girl, her hair parted evenly with a braid on either side of her head, wearing a sly smile. It was Victoria Spinler. "Peter Roscoe, everyone! Nothing, but a yellow flobberworm if I've ever seen one. You know, he used to be man enough to tell me how much he hated me every day. Guess he found out how awful his comebacks were." The group of Slitherins sniggered and Roscoe's hands balled. "No matter, he has a bit of a crush on me. Don't you think, girls? Probably just too shy to come out and say." Roscoe's fists whitened. "Afraid of rejection like he bloody well should be." Her grin widened.

At this point, Rush and Enjore traipsed along to see Roscoe red-faced. Already angry and overwhelmed from that morning's incident, Victoria Spinler was all he needed to shoot off the edge. "Arcturus Abney…" Diana whispered from behind. "Remember, now." Roscoe remembered. He just looked like he was having a hard time coping with the fact.

"Going to say anything now, Roscoe? No? Poor baby's tongue tied, he adores me so."

The group taunted him from behind her. "Love-sick darling!" Katherine Wood jeered.

"Aw! The little lad is afraid of his lovely Victoria," Andrew McKinney sneered.

A pale boy with blonde hair so white it looked as if it had been bleached stepped forward, wrapping his arm around Victoria's shoulders. He towered over her by, at least, half a foot. "This chap sweet on you, Vic?"

"Bug off, Malfoy," the girl scoffed, throwing his arm off her shoulders. "He's mine." The Malfoy boy put his hands up in mock defense and stepped back. Victoria stepped towards Roscoe in front of the empty greenhouse. "Go on, then. If you like me so much, why don't you just go out and kiss me?"

"Victoria…" Malfoy said, clearly not liking where this was going.

Victoria just ignored him and stepped closer to Roscoe so she was only inches from his face. He was only around two inches taller than her, so their eyes were almost level. "Go ahead, Slitherin wannabe. I'm close enough, so all you'd have to do is trip like Philips did to Abney and you'd fall right into that kiss you've been dreaming about. You think you're so brave, but we all know why you weren't put into Gryffindor. Did you cry when you found out you were in amongst geeks and mudbloods?"

"SHUT UP, VICTORIA! JUST SHUT UP!" Roscoe's eyes widened as soon as he'd said it.

Victoria smiled. "You owe me five galleons, Ronnie. I finally got him to crack." She walked away with a heinous grin attached to her face that Jamie felt like ripping off.

Just then, Tyler and Billie made their way down, conversing with Professor Wilcox. "Hey, guys," Billie greeted, eyeing Roscoe's frozen formation. "What's going on?"

Diana didn't pry her sympathetic eyes off of Roscoe's back. "Roscoe has to kiss Arcturus Abney."

"No!" Billie said, a little too joyfully. She tried to tame her emotions, but it only resulted in sensitive words said in a laugh-like manner.

He turned on Enjore. "This is all your fault!" He shouted as people piled into the greenhouse. "You're the one who suggested I do this!"

"Hey! I didn't suggest it, you did. I just freed it of loopholes. The only person you have to blame is yourself for letting that prat, Victoria Spinler, get to you!"

Roscoe looked over his shoulder to the girl smiling with her friends in the greenhouse. "She is a prat, isn't she?"

"And it doesn't look like Nero Malfoy is too happy with her, either," she pointed out.

"Yeah…"

"I don't think she cares about what he thinks," Billie commented, getting her elbowed by everyone but the oblivious Roscoe.


	23. Mysterious Tapping Sound

Chapter 23-Mysterious Tapping Sound

Jamie felt like a secret agent, swiftly monitoring the common room and dorm hallways for signs of activity. She had heard about spies from Enjore and gigged at the realization that she knew a spy: Ladie. Seeing no movement in the empty room, Jamie scampered down the hallway until she reached a door with a peculiar sign that read:

You may want to cool down before entering…

Because the girls in here are smoking hot.

Jamie rolled her eyes at Billie's sign and entered the first year dorm.

It was Easter break. Only Jamie and Roscoe had failed to make it through Lent. Both predicaments were understandable. Jamie used her board in an emergency and Roscoe just broke. Both cursed their fate each night before travelling off to the dream world. Kissing Arcturus Abney would be painful for the both of them.

For the first time, Jamie viewed the dorm she should've been staying in. The walls were a bright blue, still illuminated by the light outside and there were lines of tape dividing the floor into three sections aside from the room's center which stood unmarked. Enjore's four poster bed was on the far side of the room, her spot neat and organized with a still picture of a girl in the middle of kicking a ball next to an animated poster of the Tornado Quidditch Team Rush had given her for Christmas.

"That, there, is Elizabeth Eccleston my favorite football player," Enjore explained, pointing to the still girl on the wall.

"I told you, it's called soccer," Billie corrected. "Football is has a pointier brown ball and requires helmets and pads."

Enjore rolled her eyes. "For the fifteenth time, Billie, it's football! I don't care what you Americans call it!"

Billie's four poster was a safe distance from Enjore's with scrunched covers waterfalling off the foot of her bed and a hairbrush and water bottle stashed on her nightstand. Slung over a back bedpost was a sign similar to the one Jamie had read upon entry reading:

The us rules!

Jamie gave a silent chuckle at Billie's rebellious spirit and looked toward Diana's masterpiece of mess. A firework of clutter; she had undergarments strewn across the floor with a mirror and hair accessories decorating a night stand. Despite the dress code at Hogwarts, Diana still seemed to think that keeping her own clothes was necessary as well, although they did not seem to have found her drawers.

"Hey! That's my shirt!" Enjore accused, making her way to Diana's four-poster.

"Enjore! No crossing the boundary!" Diana shouted, outraged.

"I'll cross it again if I see you've taken any more of my things," she said, neatly folding the shirt on her knee before tossing into the drawer of a bureau.

"I didn't do it on purpose! I was in a rush the other day. I must've just gone through the wrong drawer by accident…er…Jamie, what are you doing?"

Jamie was motioning to the tape on the floor asking sign language, _what is this?_

"The boundary," Enjore clarified. "We're all a bit obsessive over our space, so we marked the room with tape to judge where we can and cannot go. See, the green tape is Diana's space, the yellow is Billie's, and the purple is mine. We can't step inside one another's territory. This way, there's less arguing between us. The center of the room, where there's no tape, is neutral territory." Jamie thought that this was a fascinating and organized way to provide comfort. She liked the room. It was spacy since there were only three girls and you could sense the different personalities. In the boys' dorms, everything was mixed together. Sometimes, Jamie would find Roscoe trying to put her shoes on, wondering when his feet got so big.

The girls jumped at a knock on the door. "Diana?" a muffled voice asked. "Are you in there? Ezekiel was at the window. He brought a letter for you and went to the owlry. I've got it now for you. Diana?"

Diana rushed to the door and opened it. "Thank you, Etchie," she said looking down at the letter. "You've never been to my dorm before, though. How did you know which it was?"

"The sign," she smiled, walking away.

"Etchie?" Enjore asked curiously.

"Gretchen. She's a second year. Sweet, really. Befriended her over Christmas." Diana turned the letter over in her pale hands.

"Who's it from, then?"

"My brother. He works at Gringotts, over in Egypt, you know. Wonder what he wants." She opened the letter and Jamie watched her eyes swish back and forth as she read, a smile carving its way into her face. "He's going to be a father!" she said, gleefully.

"I didn't know your brother was married," Enjore said.

Diana giggled. "Neither did the rest of my family. Van and Sasha eloped over a year ago. Haven't had the courage to tell the family since they aren't too fond of her. She's a muggle, you know. They just like to keep magical blood in the family. Only my uncle and I knew about it, although, I suspect it'll be hard to hide now!" Diana's grin widened.

"Congratulations, Diana!"

"Yeah," Billie smirked, "Can you imagine the look on your folks' faces when they hear? You'll be an aunt at the ripe age of twelve."

Diana hugged the letter to her chest, curly tufts of thick brown hair passing over her shoulder. "Oh, I wonder if it'll be a boy or girl! Or perhaps it'll be a metamorphus like Van!"

Metamorphus? Jamie heard that word in the passage under the Womping Willow. She hadn't thought about it until now. _Metamorphus? _She wrote. Jamie had been trying to use her board as little as possible, but she had no sign for this word.

"You don't know what that is?" Enjore guessed. Jamie nodded. "It's a shape-shifter or a person who can alter their outer appearance in any way, shape, or form."

Diana nodded. "Generally, they like to get those kind of people as aurors, but neither Van nor my mother liked the danger factors there, so he settled for a job at Gringotts where they put him in 'the field' as much as possible. Wish I was a metamorphus," she sighed. "I would be selected to be an auror in an instant."

"I didn't know you had that on your mind as a career," Enjore said.

"There are a lot of things you don't know about me. I knew you all had me pegged as the indifferent type when it came to being studious, but I know for a fact, there's not a person in this room who doesn't get top marks in their classes."

Diana was right. Jamie had thought of her as the unscholarly type, but that topic didn't hold Jamie for long. Her mind quickly wandered back to the metamorphus. What else had Algieba and Rasalas mentioned? There were those two words that sounded alike: narcoblix and viviblix. What did they mean, though? Jamie scribbled on her board. _What is a narcoblix?_

"Narcoblix?" Enjore asked, perplexed. "I've never heard of it."

"Me neither," Diana said. Jamie erased narcoblix to write viviblix and came up with more dry results. "Where did you hear those words?"

Jamie paused. There was an unspoken agreement among the boys not to tell Enjore, Diana, and Billie about the incident two weeks ago just as there was a spoken agreement not to tell Jamie's gender to Roscoe, Francis, and Rush. She and Tyler remained the only two who knew of both secrets. Even though she didn't like lying to the girls, she felt the situation called for it.

"Around?" Enjore translated from Jamie's signs. "That's a bit…vague, but okay. You're sure it's a real thing?" Jamie nodded. She was as sure as she had been that Vannozza was the one trapped in the room in that passage, but perhaps that wasn't the best to run on considering Vannozza turned out to be safe in the common room the whole time. "Could we go to the library and check it out?"

"Can't," Diana replied. "It closes early over Easter break, remember?"

"Would anybody like to inquire if I know what a narcoblix or viviblix is?" Billie asked, annoyed.

"Do you?" Diana asked.

"Well…no, but—"

"Ha!"

"But I did hear Professor Wilcox mention it the other day."

"Are a narcoblix and a viviblix types of plants?" Diana mused.

"Just because she teaches Herbology doesn't mean it's all she ever does," Enjore defended.

"In any case," Billie continued. "It's only seven. She could still be at the greenhouses and we won't need to get back here for another hour. Let's go check it out. Gives us something to do."

"But...truth or dare….never have I ever…exploding snap…makeovers," Diana pleaded.

"We'll have plenty of time for that later," Billie promised. "And if you think I'm letting you touch me with your girly cosmetics, you can just forget it."

Diana sighed and the girls hurried over to the greenhouses, upset to find that Professor Wilcox had retired to her quarters early. They sighed. "Well, that's disappointing," Billie stated obviously. "Hey, what's that?" Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. It was that tapping noise again! It hadn't plagued the dorms since the night when Jamie and Roscoe found the passage under the Whomping Willow and now here it was again!

Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. Jamie followed the noise as best she could around the outside of the school, the girls following with pricked ears and peeled eyes close behind until they came to the Whomping Willow. Jamie eyed the tree. It didn't sound as if it was coming from there. She walked around the massive killer plant with her companions close at hand and began stalking toward the Forbidden Forest where she could've sworn it'd come from when it stopped. "I think it came from inside there," Diana said. "But, we might as well turn back now. We're not allowed to enter the Forbidden Forest. Hence the 'forbidden'."

The girls nodded, but Jamie neared the line of trees, getting dangerously close for comfort. What if a creature ran out and swiped her off her feet to eat for dinner? She had her wand, but she doubted a bat bogy hex would do her any good against one of those fiends. She needed to be in, at least, her fourth year to survive a trip through the Forbidden Forest. Tap, tap, tap, tap. Now that the tapping wasn't faint as it was near the greenhouses, she could tell there was an odd displacement. Every now and then there was a short pause and then the tapping would continue without pattern. It was awfully odd.

Jamie took a step forward and thought she heard an echoic curse from the ground only a few meters away. She was standing on the very edge of the forest, but what would happen if she went inside, just a little ways, when it was light out? Surely she was still safe with her friends so close and the school in view. Confident she was alright, Jamie began walking into the forest despite the shouts of how stupid and idiotic she was being from behind.

Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. Crack. Jamie lifted her foot to see she had broken a small branch on the wide forest floor. The farther on she looked, the darker and denser he forest got. Tap, tap, tap, tap. "Oh, honestly, she couldn't have told me she put out mongrel traps? I suppose ignorance is not her fault, the insolent animal herder." Who on Earth was talking? She didn't see anyone. Jamie kept moving forward until she felt the ground give way beneath her.


	24. Meeting a Centaur

Chapter 24-Meeting a Centaur

Her arms and chin slammed against the rough ground. Her feet were dangling into an abyss. What happened? She hadn't seen a hole there! "Child! Do not fall!" Jamie had that part figured out already. She was simply struggling to boost herself up. She was not in a front support like she should have been and the ground could collapse beneath her arms like it had with her feet. She tried to use the sides of the hole to climb out, but her feet skated back down it as if the dirt were glass.

Suddenly, warm hands slid under her arms and she was dragged out of the hole by familiar faces. "Jamie, we warned you not to come in here," Enjore scolded.

"GREAT GANFOLF, A CENTAUR!" Billie screamed. The girls looked over the side of the two-meter-wide hole. Lying on the floor was a man with long, brown hair, tied back in a ponytail and a sleek, muscular body…or perhaps Jamie could describe it as two bodies. His legs took the shape of a horse without the head, its fur the same color as his hair. Half man, half horse! What a sight! Jamie's mother had never told her of a wonder such as this! Why would she leave out such a splendor?

The man's chest was covered in hair and she secretly wondered if all men got so hairy or if it was just…what had Billie called it? A centaur?

"Excuse me, younglings, I hate to intrude, but I would appreciate you catching a superior of yours. Teresa, if possible. I shall note the action as honorable should you fulfill it without making trouble for me."

"Teresa?" Diana asked. "Who is that?"

"The woman I am supposed to meet. She claims to care for animals."

Enjore snapped. "Professor Townsend's first name is Terri which is short for Teresa. She's the games keeper. I'll bet that's who he's talking about!"

"Child, I will not be spoken about in the third person in my presence! When you talk, you refer to whom you are speaking, is that clear?"

Enjore and Diana exchanged glances and Enjore nodded. "Erm…I'll go get Professor Townsend. I thought I saw her with Professor Douglas earlier. They're probably in the teacher's lounge." Enjore rushed off and the three just stood there.

"Where you the one bangin' up that racket?" Billie asked.

The centaur scoffed, "I understand that you humans are limited in knowledge of your own kind. This is a muggle technique from centuries back which a muggle showed my kind over two decades ago. Of course, centaurs praised the knowledge. We like our own ways, but do not reject the better. It is called Morse Code. It is used to communicate through sound. I've been trying to contact one of my kind ever since I was trapped here over two hours ago. The problem is that we centaurs generally stay close to the forest's heart, so as to avoid wizard interaction, so no one has heard my beacon. Teresa regretted to inform me of the traps she has laid out.

_Why did I not see you prior?_ Jamie signed to Billie.

"Er…something about a chicken?" she guessed.

"She wants to know why we didn't see the hole," Diana translated, rolling her eyes at Billie. "A fair question. I mean, it is pretty big. Do you know?"

"Child," he chuckled, "of course I know. This hole was designed to catch larger, nimble vermin, so it is _clearly_ supposed to be invisible to the naked eye before contact."

"Clearly," Billie mocked. Jamie agreed with her. She had never met a centaur, but this one made it obvious that he thought he was better than them. Perhaps he was in some ways, but it seemed a major personality flaw to underestimate an opponent based purely upon sight. "Hey," she suddenly remembered. "You 'clearly' know what a viviblix and narcoblix are, right?"

He eyed her for a moment. "Clearly," he repeated.

"Would you mind enlightening us?"

"I am not a grandsire or educator. You may ask your own superior, Child!"

Enjore hastily returned with Professor Townsend, panting outside the hole. "Bane!" she puffed. "I can't believe I missed a trap."

"I can," he said. "Honestly, Teresa, why would you not inform me of these before my oncoming approach? I would have kept an eye out for them."

"I thought I had filled them all in."

"Is the human memory really so awful, it cannot even remember what it has done?"

"I didn't make them. They just, sort of, appeared. Another one of you got caught in here a few weeks ago. Drove a ton of students crazy with that taping code you like to use."

"Morse Code, Teresa. Now, if you don't mind, I appear to have sprained my ankle because of these traps on your territory. Should you help, I will willingly not inform my kind of this atrocity."

"Could one of you—"

"I'll get Madam Quigley," Enjore panted, rushing off again.

"Wingardium Liviosa!" Professor Townsend spoke, waving her wand confidently. Bane flew flatly through the air and came to rest on the leafy spring ground.

"Your younglings ask precarious questions," Bane informed her.

She smiled. "Are they trying to smuggle information out of you?" Instead of asking the children, she asked Bane. It appeared that she had experience enough around him to know to treat him superiorly.

"It appears so," he accused.

"Were not!" Billie defended. "We were going to ask Professor Wilcox what a viviblix and narcoblix are first!"

"A vivblix and narcoblix?! Those haven't been reported for ages! How did you kids find out about that?"

"You've heard of them? What are they?"

"Suppose it isn't dangerous information. They're beings that manipulate other humans. Both function through a bite. There are actually three kinds of blixes: a narcoblix, viviblix, and lectoblix. While a narcoblix can control people while they sleep, viviblixes manipulate the dead, creating zombie-like surrogates. A lectoblix sucks the youth out of people to use on themselves, making them younger. As far as I know, it can happen to any magical thing of any species and isn't passed on by genetics. It just, sort of, appears. It's a scary thing, though. Blixes are highly discriminated in the wizarding world, almost as much as werewolves were at one point. Then, they all just disappeared. No one's sure what happened. Some say it was just a plague that affected a select few people and went away."

"Ridiculous wizard theories," Bane mumbled.

"You don't think so, Bane?"

"It is ludicrous. A kind is not forged by a disease. The blixes went into hiding, waiting for their day to come to life once more without persecution. Lucky for the centaurs, our species has no fear of such things. Being nearly immortal, we rarely vary."

"If you're nearly immoral, does that mean you don't have babies?" Diana asked.

"No, child."

"But, what if you're killed off?"

"Centaurs, killed off? Don't make me laugh. We are warriors superior to any witch or wizard."

This time, Jamie and Diana exchanged a glace.

"Oh, we'd figure out a way to make some females for you," she winked. "Maybe they'd loosen you up a bit, so you'd be more like the satyrs."

"The satyrs are imbecilic! We will never be of likeness!" Professor Townsend giggled. It was then when Jamie truly appreciated how young the teacher was. Why did she have white hair? If it were a beautiful shade of brown to match her eyes, she might've even looked pretty.

Enjore returned with Madam Quigley who fixed the centaur's ankle in a snap and ushered the girls back into the castle as Bane and Professor Townsend walked off. The girls lied to Madam Quigley on their way back, saying they had heard a voice call out in the forest instead of blindly wandering in to see a mysterious noise. They were warned to call a teacher next time and had five points removed from their house, but it wasn't much of a loss, so they sauntered back to the Ravenclaw common room without mind.

The rest of the night, Jamie got the first glimpse of what girls actually did in their free time together. She assumed they did the same activities as boys, but Diana focused them more on personal beauty than the boys ever cared for. Though, when it came to conversation, there was not much differentiation aside from the girls' more 'in tune' thinking toward things. They took a complication to more depth than boys, but she wasn't sure if that was smart or just idiotic.

Before snuggling into her array of pillows that would serve as her mattress for the night, Jamie stole a glance out the window just in time to see a glow of white light faintly illuminating the Whomping Willow. A robed figure walked directly to the tree's trunk without attack and disappeared through the hole. Jamie gaped at the empty darkness. How had the person gotten past without a fight? Jamie sighed. After meeting a centaur, she did not feel the night needed to be topped off with another life-threatening escapade. Jamie went to sleep.


	25. Kissing Arcturus Abney

Chapter 25-Kissing Arcturus Abney

Dear 12-year-old,

Did you forget I am now sixteen? What, no gift? I was nice enough to return the empty favor instead of sending dung. Our oldest occupant has moved on, so has our youngest, but in a different way. I expect I am next to go. Do not attempt to contact me or return. Cheryl is reachable at Christopher's.

-Your, now 16, former contact

P.S. Yes, rug rat. I love you.

Jamie smiled at the added message at the end of the letter. She'd expected a question of what love was or a statement telling her that only mothers loved. This was unexpected and pleasant. Could Ladie have explained it to him?

Jamie reread the letter and that's when some of the content sunk in. First off, Ben was sixteen now! She'd forgotten about his February birthday. Like he said, no gift or happy birthday was enclosed. What did he mean by _our oldest occupant_? Was he talking about Tony? He was the oldest person living at Shack Number Two. If that was so, then the youngest was obviously Nathan…or was it herself? Technically, Jamie lived at Hogwarts now, so it couldn't be her. What did Ben mean by "moved on"? Both Tony and Nathan had "moved on" in some way, but they were different. How, though? Ben hadn't mentioned anything specifically. The thought worried her. Perhaps the two had just left Alden Manor, but went to different locations. If that was so, why was Ben left behind? Nathan couldn't have left without losing his voice like Jamie had. Tony, though, could've left freely. Perhaps Nathan was a sleep surrogate like Ladie and Enjore? She doubted it. Nathan was not present at Hogwarts which seemed the main thing it was used for on children. Maybe the enchantment that had stripped her of her voice only worked on girls? Jamie's head was spinning with the countless possibilities.

_I expect I am next to go._ Next to go like Nathan or like Tony? Maybe neither. The sentence disturbed her a bit. She could sense that something was wrong. Her gut feeling was to write back or beg Enjore to return to the manor through sleep to see what had happened, but the next part of the note told her to do the exact opposite. Cheryl was Ladie, as Jamie had learned back on Christmas, and was staying at Goblin Goblets, Christopher's pub. She remembered the names well.

Jamie felt a bit relieved that, if she needed to, she could contact Ladie in a town right outside her school. The problem was why should she need to? Was there imminent danger at hand where she might need to escape and find Ladie? Did this have something to do with Tony and Nathan "moving on"? How would she get to Hogsmeade should she encounter information she desperately needed to share or know?

Jamie's head hurt. She reminded herself of the girls who had been analyzing school situations to a T at their sleepover during Easter break. Were they scrutinizing or over-evaluating? Should she ask the boys about it to ease her stress or would they simply throw paper on a flame in an attempt to stamp out the tiny flare, only creating a fire in the process?

On top of the stressing letter, she couldn't stop thinking about her kiss with Arcturus Abney which was overdue already. The group had experienced considerable fun at Jamie and Roscoe's expense, searching for over an hour through library books to find spells that would incapacitate either the one being snogged or the snogger. They'd had a fairly decent time, laughing over ridiculous scenarios, like trapping Arcturus in a corridor alone with a drown Roscoe, forcing him to give Roscoe mouth to mouth.

Finally, two separate plans were reached for how to kiss the boy. They both could've done it directly, but neither wanted to do that. Jamie sat at the table in the Great Hall, enjoying lunch as much as she could. She had a big breakfast, but went easy on lunch, expecting she'd blow chunks after her mouth came in contact with any saliva stationed on Arcturus's lips. The very thought make her want to hurl in her seat.

"Calm down, Roscoe," Enjore told the hysterical boy. "It's not like we're going to think you're homosexual."

"Homosexual? What's that?"

Billie interjected. "They don't have gay people in the UK either?"

"They've got them," Enjore said, eyeing Roscoe strangely.

Roscoe looked between the two girls. "What are you two talking about?"

"Gays," Billie explained. "Man kiss man? Men are in romantic relationships with other men."

"ARE YOU TELLING ME PEOPLE DO THIS VOLUNTARILY?!"

Jamie giggled. She had never heard of this either, but thought his reaction was silly.

* * *

Soft, yellow fabric brushed her skin and she never thought anything could be so fine and delicate. Like with her burlap rags, she could feel the breeze from outside brush against every part of her body. The air was foggy and damp with dusty clouds looming overhead like someone had spread clumps of ash across a blue ceiling, choking the air with microwaved water. Bright balls of yellow poked their heads from the ground before being plucked away be Jamie's bare hands and braided into a short daisy chain, clinging to her wrist. The air was silently waiting.

_Where is Roscoe?_ She signed. Roscoe had his own sign: the letter "R" held to her nose.

"Washing his mouth out with various spells and hygienic poisons," Enjore chuckled. "I wish you could've seen it. He stunned Arcturus in the bathroom and, right as he was kissing him, Professor Douglas walked in and Roscoe pretended that he was giving Abney CPR! They ran away, guilty as ever while I was clever enough to tell him that Roscoe had been fed a light love potion by unknown enemies. The whole thing was brilliant to watch! Of course…then he asked me why I was in the boy's bathroom…that's when_ I_ ran."

"You look smashing," Billie said in her fake British accent, giving Jamie the thumbs up.

Enjore looked her over. "Diana really did dress you up well," she complimented. "Of course, even without all that, you're an absolute knockout. Now, go get this done before Rush and others change their minds and decide they really do want to see you snog the Gryffindor."

Jamie nodded. She looked down at the yellow frock, loosely dangling over her body. She was a little small for it. Down her back was a line of bobby pins where Diana had needed to take in the dress. Jamie sighed. Not only was she hesitant to reveal herself as a girl to Arcturus, she despised the idea of touching his slimy lips to her own. What if some of his spit got into her mouth? Disgusting! The girls had assured her, though, at Arcturus would not recognize her as Jamie without her enlarged eyes, boy trainer, and male surroundings.

Jamie took a deep breath as the girls disappeared into the castle, probably watching from a distance. Where was Arcturus? She stalked the edge of the castle, hoping to intercept him on his way to meet his study group. "Excuse me?" Jamie nearly jumped out of surprise as she swiftly turned, her dress flowing at her sides, to face a Caucasian, dirty blonde-haired boy. The boy usually barely exceeded her height, but she was on lower ground on a hill, so it looked as if he soared over her. How would she contact his lips if he was at such an elevation? "Oh," he said, surprised, apparently, not able to stray his hazel eyes from hers. "Hello."

Jamie kept silent. What else could she do? She wanted to dawdle as much as possible. Anything to keep her from going through this painful experience. They stayed quiet for a minute as she memorized the various shades of rust encompassing his iris. Diana was right. He was beautiful. "Err…thrilling conversation, really, but, I should go." He began to step around her, straining his neck not to look back at the girl drawing him with her veela enchantment.

_No!_ Jamie thought. _Stop! I haven't kissed you yet!_ Desperate, she watched as the boy made his way down the hill. It was now or never. Her best chance was to follow Billie's lead. What did she do? She fell. They fell. Jamie hadn't taken into account the steepness of the hill. Before the two knew it, they were uncomfortably piled at the bottom. Jamie closed her eyes tight, hoping she wouldn't puke, but reopened them after gaining herself. She slid along his chest until there was a clash of bronze and henna once more. Their eye contact was broken when Jamie pushed her lips softly against Arcturus Abney's.

Jamie felt an oddly calming feeling going over her like a sleeping drug had been administered to her through Arcturus's lips. This was not as bad as she'd thought it would be. His lips weren't dripping with saliva; they were like hers. Pressed against his chest, almost resting, she felt as if she could go to sleep were it not for what she was doing to a person her barely knew. In any case, she felt like she understood why people did this to each other. It was nice. Relaxing even.

She realized that she had been down for a little while without objection and resurfaced in a daze. All around her, it seemed like she had been blocked to the sounds of life and happiness. It was a good feeling to be alive. It was thrilling to snog a boy in the grass. Just when she thought it was over, though, Arcturus pulled her back for more. Did he like this? It gave Jamie a feeling of tingly serendipity that she should be so fortuitous. Why did Roscoe want to be rid of every trace of kissing this boy? It was enjoyable. Perhaps it was because Roscoe is a boy who isn't homosexual. She had never really thought much about it, but it made sense.

A hand touched her shoulder and she realized that she needed to report back to her friends. Jamie had expected to hightail it from the boy as soon as their lips met. She wasn't supposed to like this! Gripping back onto reality, Jamie rolled off of Arcturus and lunged up the hill, sprinting into the castle. Jamie rushed down the hall, charging into the corridor that served as the rendezvous point. There, Jamie's robes and glasses awaited her which she threw on. Jamie did not, however, return to the common room as planned. Instead, she climbed the countless stairs to the roof which she was relieved to find empty. She had stopped coming up here since winter when it was too cold to and missed it.

Jamie fell to the stone roof, wondering how she would ever look at Arcturus again. Billie had brushed what she did off as an accident because…well…it was. She hadn't deliberately tried to plant one on Arcturus like Jamie had. Worse, Jamie had never used her veela enchantment for her own personal vendetta…or had she? Jamie thought back to coaxing information out of Gregory back at the gates of Alden manor and felt disgusted with herself. She cursed the person who put this enchantent on her. It was, no doubt, the only reason Arcturus did not completely repel her. What would have happened if he were not drawn in by it? Would he have walked off? She hated not knowing. The veela enchantment was nothing but a curse.


	26. What Now?

Chapter 26-What Now?

"Hey! Hand that over!"

"Oh, Leo, please. I won't take it," Enjore whined. "There are no mums around anymore anyway."

"You know the rules. No potions outside classes."

"It's just Dragon Porridge."

"All the more reason to hand it in," Leo said. "If someone were to accidentally take that raw—and, believe me, it's happened before—the effects could be disastrous."

"But, Leo—"

"Enjore, don't make me give you a detention." Enjore sighed, handing Leo her vial of Dragon Porridge. She had forgotten about it in robes which had spent most of the time in the wash over Lent to keep her from smelling the incense firmly smoked into the fabric. Just today, she had been cleaning out her pockets in the common room to find it and have it confiscated by Leo.

"What do you mean 'don't make _me_ give you a detention'?" Vannozza asked from her seat in the corner. "You always make me give them to kids. The least you could do is give me a little credit and say 'don't make me make Vannozza give you a detention.' Honestly, Leo, you hardly appreciate me."

"I sound empowered this way," Leo said, turning to his fellow prefect.

She looked up from the book in her lap. "Instead of trying to _sound_ empowered, why not _be_ empowered for a change?"

"Next time, I'm giving out my own detentions, then."

"Don't let me stop you," she said looking down at her book as Leo walked away.

"Vannozza," Enjore said, looking at Jamie's signs. "I think Jamie wants to talk to you…or you to talk to her."

Vannozza nodded and looked to Jamie from her book as Enjore walked off. "What is it, then," she asked with a smile.

_We found out what the tapping noise was._ Jamie wrote proudly.

Vannozza frowned. "Tapping noise?"

_The one that kept you up back at the end of March._

"I'm afraid I still don't follow."

_Remember at the end of March, when you couldn't sleep? You were finishing an essay for Defense Against the Dart Arts._

"I'm afraid that I still don't recall. Are you sure it wasn't someone else?" She asked curiously.

_You said we looked like we'd seen a ghost._

Vannozza shrugged. "I'm sorry, but none of that jumps to mind. I can't remember staying up late at any point because of an annoying sound. I'm a heavy sleeper. Usually, I only wake when someone shakes me or get up myself."

Jamie was slightly puzzled. Was it possible that Vannozza simply forgot the incident? It would be hard for Jamie to draw a blank on a memory of something that had kept her up all night. Especially when it was only a month ago that it happened.

* * *

June had finally approached and, everywhere Jamie looked, she seemed to spot new information jumping out at her from a book or student saying it aloud, eager to memorize. The Ravenclaw common room was filled with books and study pages, mostly for the fifth and seventh years that had their O.W.L.s and N.E.W.T.s coming up. Even the boys, who Jamie had expected to be laid back, were playing bizarre study games with each other and practicing spells in the dorms. The relaxed air that had been around the table in the Great Hall all year tightened until people were merely there to eat and leave for more cramming. The finals were soaring into view fast and the Ravenclaws were eager to keep up their reputations for acing them.

Meanwhile, the other tables didn't seem too worried about their exams. While the Ravenclaws sat vigorously studying since June 1st, the Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs seemed laid back and secure. At least the Slytherins had sense enough to get some review down, but they were not nearly as intense as the Ravenclaws.

Each day, Jamie would go through three fat stacks of note cards, stun and disarm Tyler on the roof, and reread a chapter from one of her classes from the year, searching it desperately for information she may have missed. Madam Cox had never given her a final exam before, so she was worried she would fail this. Of course, she had taken tests over the year, but something about the flurry made her think that this was a different idea completely. The Ravenclaws only added exponentially to her stress. Every time she tried to relax in the grass outside, she'd be scolded by a fellow Ravenclaw. Everyone in her house seemed extremely fettered and on edge. She'd thought of most of the people as benevolent until she'd disturbed a study group and felt their bellicosity from almost being hexed five different ways.

No one seemed to care anymore about winning the Qudditch cup. Not only were they in last place for Quidditch after playing a lousy season, but Hufflepuff was utterly defeating Ravenclaw and Slytherin in the house cup which was probably why they were the only two placing a decent attempt at studying so early in June. Gryffindor were neck and neck with Hufflepuff, excitement growing at both tables. Slytherins didn't even bother grumbling about it after winning consecutively for the last five years.

Jamie tapped her quill against her transfiguration test. It wasn't nearly as hard as she'd thought. She probably wouldn't ace the writing portion, but she knew the answers to all but a few questions, so she was confident she'd pull through with a passing grade. Diana and Enjore would, no doubt, jump through the test, passing with flying colors. Those two were the queens of their own attention spans, taking in every point of information during the year.

Jamie looked up when a short shriek was heard from the back room followed by Billie's full and hearty laugh. It was her turn to be tested and she promised the teacher a show. Jamie wondered what had happened in there. Knowing Billie, she probably got cocky and transformed Professor Young's belongings into flamingos or something of the sort. The first year Ravenclaws knew that Billie was the best at Transfiguration. If presented with the opportunity, she could take the O.W.L. for Transfiguration and ace it. She claimed that it was all Oofles, her ferret, or as she called him, her familiar. Oofles was a nice, well trained ferret, but he made Billie look a little kooky to be carrying him around all day. She had given him up for Lent, but had, apparently, not broken the habit. He was crawling around her body once more the day of Easter.

Jamie watched as Billie exited the classroom with a wide grin on her face. 'The show' may or may not have gone well for Professor Young, but it certainly had been pleasurable for Billie. Eyes followed her as she made her way back to her seat. Immediately upon reentering her test, the eyes darted back to their papers and a new student was called.

Jamie played with her hair and glasses. She never realized how truly annoying they were until now. She wrote with her left hand and fondled her neck with her right. It was a nervous habit. She probably touched every part of her upper body while taking a test, caressing her skin in an attempt to calm down and find something for her other hand to do. Her fingers stroked her right arm until she felt two scabs placed almost directly next to each other below her shoulder. Where did they come from? She didn't remember hurting herself at all recently. Tracing the outline of the scabs, they felt like imperfect circles, still a little fresh. It was curious.

That night, before Jamie went to bed, she looked in the mirror, examining her scabs. They were each about a centimeter wide and a crusty brown like any other injury.

Jamie yawned and hurried to her dorms wondering what she would do now. It was only a few days before everyone at school was required to leave Hogwarts. What would happen to her? She had no place to go and Alden Manor was not an option according to Ben's letter. She had tried persuading Professor Douglas to ask the headmaster if she could stay and he said that he'd inquire, but something told her that the deal to stay here was not sealed. Jamie's heart wasn't completely into staying at Hogwarts anyway. She wanted to know what was going on with Ladie, what was going to happen to Ben, and what had happened to Tony and Nathan. Ladie, at this point, though, was her only contact and she resided in Hogsmeade at the moment which Jamie would not be able to visit until school let out.

Jamie sighed, sitting on her four-poster bed. This wasn't the only thing bothering her. There were still several unanswered questions looming about. Why exactly was there a spell against children leaving Alden Manor? Why did it diminish when the person turned seventeen? It was just too much of a coincidence that it was the same age that 'the trace' the ministry kept on children disappeared as well. Why did girls at Alden Manor get the veela enchantment? How did it work towards whatever those who were in charge of the manor wanted? Ladie had barely scratched the tip of the iceberg with her explanation back at Christmas. Jamie wanted more. When she lived on Alden Manor, it never occurred to her to question their ways like Ben did. Ben was just odd and rebellious. Was that the reason why he was still there?

There were so many questions circulating her mind, but, until she found out how to answer them, Jamie decided to sleep on it.


	27. The Narcoblix

**AN: I know Harry Potter has no mention of blixes, but I was reading Fablehaven when I wrote this and like the idea. BTW, thanks for reading this far in. Only a few chapters left to go!**

Chapter 27-The Narcoblix

Jamie breathed in deep. The ground beneath her was hard and stony. Why did her wrists hurt so much? Upon moving her neck, she felt a stab of pain. Perhaps she had slept on it wrong. Jamie pushed her head against the masonry, looking for a pillow. Her teeth chattered. Why was it so cold in her dorm? Why did the air seem so dry? Trying to move her hands to stretch, she found that they could hardly move apart and the more she tried to separate them, the more pain shot through her wrists. Upon trying to move at all, she found that she could only muster a wiggle. She couldn't even open her mouth. Her eyes seemed glued shut. What was going on?

Once she realized her state, she started to squirm. Something metallic was clamped down on her wrists and ankles, tied together by a rope that extended down her back. After a while of wriggling, Jamie managed a sitting position where her arms and feet were off to the side so the rope wouldn't dig into her. Running her hands along her pockets as best she could, she found they were empty of supplies. Her shoes were gone. Oh, if she could only open her eyes!

Suddenly, she felt calm, as if she were kissing Arcturus Abney again, but without the tingling sensation in her body. She heard a voice next to her. No questions sprang up. Jamie couldn't think. She could discern nothing in her mind but the words and what they meant, completely obsequious to their command. "Open your eyes." It was done. Jamie felt her eyes free and she was looking a Billie. "Thought you'd never get up," she said. "If they come back, lay down and pretend you're asleep again, okay?" Jamie nodded. She, Billie, and a sleeping Roscoe appeared to be crammed into a narrow passage. It was not dark, yet Jamie could see no source of light illuminating the room. Everything was clear except for the ends of the passage which appeared to simply drift into shadow. Billie and Roscoe looked to be in the same condition as Jamie, but Billie had no clamped eyes or tape on her mouth. "It's kind of funny, don't you think? That they'd put that stuff on your mouth? Well, at least we know they're a little stiff on information. We can use that to our advantage. I'm not worried about you spreading info, it's Roscoe. I've got to keep him asleep. He's got a big mouth. Gandalf, I wish we had Tyler instead."

Jamie was confused. Who was Billie talking about? What was Billie talking about? She sounded like she knew something, but Jamie could hardly ask. Not only did she not have her board, but she could not use SEE because of her bound hands.

Billie continued. "These walls must have some pretty powerful magic. Then again, this is Hogwarts. Anything could be lurking around here. I would love to go back in time and pick the founders' brains, you know? See what I can grasp. They'd probably just be filled with old news, though. Not all old magic is powerful. Everybody assumes that, though. We didn't understand a lot of the world until recently. You'd think that witches and wizards would realize what they're missing. Why their magic isn't as powerful as it once was, I mean. I'm one of the lucky few to figure out the secret. I suspect it's why I'm in here. All that extra time with the Professor and the stunt I pulled in Transfiguration yesterday. Boy, this is some messed up stuff going on right underneath Darby's nose. I can't wait to see the look on that guy's face when he finds out. If he finds out, that is. Darby's not too bright a guy. Last good headmaster Hogwarts had was Dumbledore. Course, everybody knows about him. No one could try to beat that guy and I don't think anyone should. It'll just bring about more trouble. You following?"

Jamie thought Billie's words were confusing, but, for some reason, all made sense. She was talking about the various levels of power in magic. She felt as if her mind had a, sort of, connection with Billie's at that time. She could feel where her thoughts were going and could follow them to the exact. Billie wasn't talking about old and new magic and the balance of power in it like it appeared. She was talking about the changing world. The witches and wizards of the modern world try so hard to follow the example of former generations that they miss the point. No one ever thinks that they could build a school like Hogwarts again. They're wrong, though. All magic can be done and undone. All magic can be repeated.

"Yeah. I know you get what I mean. I don't just master the physical in Transfiguration. I'm a student to the subjective world also. It's not like I'm a blix. No. I suppose you could call me a mentalist. It's how I knew about where Enjore was going when she slept and how Tyler saw through your glasses. Everyone in our group has their own secret they've yet to share with us and I'm the keeper. Seems more a fitting job for you considering your condition, but I know that it's temporary." Billie smiled. "That spell they use to keep our eyes shut is wholly of mind. It tried to trick you into thinking that you can't open them, like it's not humanly possible or something. Those spells don't affect minds like mine and while you're in connection with me, it won't affect you either. I know you've probably never heard of it before. It's a technique called hypnosis. Muggles try to make it into something it's not, but I know how to use it right."

Jamie knew at that moment that there was much more to Billie than what she made everyone believe. She tried to act like she had a big ego, but, in reality, all her rowdy comments held a modest edge. She was just a confident soul who truly knew what she was doing. How was it possible to understand her? She felt as if she did when in the hypnotic connection, yet she still held a veil of mystery. Was she keeping something for Jamie? Perhaps there was just still more to be uncovered.

The clop of shoes came echoing from the darkness for down the passage. It sounded as if there were several pairs. As commanded, Jamie fell to the ground and closed her eyes, once again finding that they were sealed together.

"Drag them," a harsh voice hissed. Jamie's mind was too muddled to identify its familiarity. "They will wake." Jamie heard Roscoe moan next to her as they grabbed him. She could feel a stranger grab the rope connecting her shackles and drag her along the corridor, but she did not feel stressed or nervous. She suspected this had something to do with Billie. After only a few minutes of being lugged across the frigid rock, the tape on Jamie's mouth was ripped off and sentences were muttered into the air.

Jamie felt her eyes blink. The room was it bigger here…wherever here was. She could see four silhouettes in front of her and shivered at a white pile of sticks in the corner. Bones.

What was she doing here? "Huh?" Roscoe appeared to be waking next to her. "What's going on…you!" he shouted, staring directly into Jamie's eyes. "TRAITOR! HOW COULD YOU!?"

"Roscoe, please," Billie said. "Even after I told you what a narcoblix was and you heard that conversation in the Shrieking Shack, you still don't get it? Catch up, friend. You're seriously slow."

"I see our captive has more information than we presumed," Algieba's voice echoed from the shadows. "How did you manage the gag?"

"Uh, magic, duh." Billie mocked as if it were completely obvious.

"Wait, wait, I'm confused," Roscoe said.

"Of course you are," Billie sighed. You'd be flummoxed if I made you a PowerPoint presentation on the subject."

"You're awfully witty," Adhafera noted. "I told you we'd need to get rid of this one, Algieba. She's trouble."

"Get rid of me?" Billie laughed. "Please. You need me if you're ever going to take that idiot, Darby, down. He's too highly protected by Douglas and, I've got to tell you, I keep my eyes on more than one person on the grounds."

Algieba sniggered. "Clever one, we've got here. It's too bad keeping her alive would prove to be too dangerous. We could use an extra set of eyes."

"What are you guys talking about? And why is Jamie tied up? Isn't she with them?"

"Ugh! Roscoe, you peabrain, you still don't get it!"

"Get what?! I'd like it if someone explained to me why I was kidnapped by one of my roommates and chained up in a cold dungeon next to him!" What was Roscoe talking about? Did one of the boys betray them and…no…something was off. He said his roommate was next to him and Jamie was the only one from his dorm she could see chained up next to Roscoe. He'd called her a traitor. What had she done that she couldn't remember?

"Roscoe, take a hint!"

"Polyjuice?"

"Idiot! Why would I bother to tell you all about the three blixes? You obviously didn't catch on!"

"What?"

"Algieba! That old woman standing right in front of us? She's a narcoblix! She's been controlling Vannozza for months now and just got the chance to bite Jamie. I've felt the connection ever since yesterday morning when I saw Jamie at breakfast and during exams, she couldn't stop picking at something on her arm. If you didn't bite her, Algieba, I might not have figured it out at all."

"A narcoblix? Like, someone who controls people in their sleep through a bite?"

"Exactly and she and her little freak show have been cozy in the Shrieking Shack in Hogsmeade the entire year. What I don't get is their motives. Why take down Darby? He's a bad headmaster and all, I get that, but he's not standing in the way of anything. You could smack him aside if not for Douglas."

"I see our recalcitrant little sleuth still hasn't caught on," Algieba cackled harshly, stepping out of the darkness with Rasalas, looking to be Algieba's age. "Our target is much larger than a Hogwarts headmaster! No, we work for a larger foe. One you will never know by name."

"Matthew Alden?"

Algieba's smile faltered. "You know of a higher ranking member? Who _are_ you?"

"Honestly? I'm an idiosyncratic twelve-year-old with average intelligence who outwitted a pair of blixes and reanimated woman by listening. Could your methods really have that many holes that a first year saw through them or am I just extraordinary? Either way you choose, you're either dissing yourself or paying me a compliment."

"Don't get presumptuous, girly. We've still got you in chains and if you're holding information like it sounds, it will quickly be extracted."

"I have sheer willpower to tackle your mind tricks and the rest of the lot is just as clueless as the rest of the school, so you might as well erase them and set them free."

"What about yourself?"

"I'll exchange information for an exposition. Don't get me wrong, I'll eventually piece it all together. It'd just save me time if you came out now."

"What do we get in return?"

"I'll see what you're most desperate for when you explain. Don't bother leaving anything out, by the way. I'll just fill in the blanks later. I doubt that comment will stop you, though, so go on."

Algieba squinted her eyes at Billie, trying to figure out what to make of her. "Perhaps this will explain some. COME FORWARD!" Jamie stared, wide eyed, as Adhafera and Vannozza walked into the luminance of the room. Jamie now saw Adhafera for the first time. Ugly and skinny, her hair was greasy and her face reflected a kind girl, not a woman as Jamie had expected. The girl looked to only be Vannozza's age. "Mind control, you see. A bite forms a connection for life at can never be erased. Once the recipient sleeps, I have full control over him or her. Meet my darling sister, Adhafera."

"Nice to meet you all formally," Billie said smugly. "She's been reanimated, I presume? It's disgusting. You could never just let her rest."

"SHE NEVER WANTED TO DIE! HER WISH WAS TO BE AMONGST THE LIVING!"

"AND YOU BANISHED HER TO A PLACE WHERE SHE WAS NOTHING BUT A GHOST LUGGING A BODY! ADHAFERA DOES NOT WANT THIS!"

"You _dare_ tell me what my sister wants! I have known her for one hundred and twenty years! She wished to live!"

"Live!? This isn't living! Look at your sister! She's a prisoner in her own body, trapped on Earth, not growing, not changing! She can't feel a thing! All she wants is to relax and die, Algieba. She didn't want it as a girl, but she wants it now. I can feel it, Algieba. She needs to rest." Tears streamed from Billie's eyes, flowing down her cheeks.

"NO! She lives! She will always live!"

"Algieba—"

"SILENCE! I will explain, as you asked, for information. I will not submit to your adjuration!"

"One day, you will understand," Billie whispered.

"We are of veela enchantments. Both of us were given them as babies. We were two of the first." She motioned to her sister. "Adhafera lost hers when she bravely fought and looked death in the eye at the Battle of Hogwarts. The enchantment is only broken by death. She no longer bears the beauty she once had.

"Adhafera and I were born on a place called Alden Manor. Around the time we were growing up, He Who Must Not Be Named was feared everywhere. Finally, he was defeated and life for me returned as scheduled. The ministry has always been weak, easily crumpling when a new influence infiltrates. It lacks a backbone. That's what I was put in to provide. At first, it was just supposed to be me and Adhafera, but when she fell, she was no longer of use without the veela enchantment and I was left alone to guard the ministry. Over the past century, children have been bred on Alden Manor and ones like it to pull strings, not only in the ministry, but in Gringotts and many other private organizations. Our main job is to use our powers over the male mind to control a corporation from the heart and marry a high ranking man who we eventually abandon to return to our manors to raise children. There is your explanation," she spat at Billie."

"You left out the part about why you're here now. You obviously are not in a manor, raising children. What happened?"

"I was different. Badly trained and disobedient because of my sister's disposal, I married a viviblix as I was supposed to, but fell in love. I did not want to abandon Rasalas and stayed with him, sending my offspring to the manor instead. I, to this day, am unsure if any of them were kept alive."

"What have you been doing in the Shrieking Shack?"

"ENOUGH! I have held my part of the bargain."

"Who is Lupin and when did she die?"

"How _dare_ you—"

"Is your husband a vivblix?" Algieba stopped. "That's why you were sent to marry him in the first place, correct?"

"Lupin," Rasalas interrupted, "is in the corner." He gestured to a skeleton which seemed to have come alive from its pile of bones. It took a shaky step towards them.


	28. Rescue by Familiar

Chapter 28-Rescue by Familiar

"Billie," Roscoe asked, quavering. "That's not real…"

"Roscoe, did you pay attention at all when I explained to you what blixes were?! He's a viviblix. A person who can control the dead. He must've raided a grave and strung the bones together."

"I thought she might be useful, seeing as she was once a great auror and metamorphus, but she is useless in this form." Rasalas sneered. "I prefer to work with flesh for its convenience, but the smell does get hard to work with."

"That's…disgusting," Billie admitted. "I'd rather stray from the topic of decaying cadavers. Where are we?"

"You owe us information," Algieba reminded her.

"Maybe I know something about where we are that you don't," Billie suggested.

"A hidden system of dungeons under the school.

"System of dungeons?" Roscoe said incredulously. "How could everyone miss that? I've never seen it on any map of Hogwarts."

"Hence the 'hidden', Roscoe," Billie sighed. "No one can ever know everything about Hogwarts and those who think they do are just utter morons. Take Lord Voldemort for example." Jamie thought she saw Algieba and Rasalas wince at the name for some reason. "Thinking he knew all was his greatest downfall. Most powerful wizard of all time, sure, but not the brightest nut in the tree."

"Exactly," Algieba continued. "No one can find you down here and there's no hope of escape. People have died wandering these dungeons."

"Right, right, we may as well walk blindly through a maze of dangers without a wand."

Jamie thought she heard the echo of steps in the distance and a faint outcry. At first, Jamie wondered why no one was reacting until she saw Roscoe's frightened face and Billie's calm one. Billie was acting as if she didn't hear a thing because Algieba and Rasalas were obviously too old to make out anything so faint and Roscoe was trying his best to follow her lead by keeping his mouth shut.

"Precisely," Algieba smiled, oblivious to the loudening footfalls and roars.

"There's just one thing you've forgotten," Billie disclosed.

"And what's that?"

"Oofles."

"I'm sorry?"

"OOFLES!"

At that moment, the footsteps released an inhuman roar to which Algieba and Rasalas would have had to be deaf not to hear. A monster of acuminate teeth, painted in lustrous, tan scales charged into the room. It was the size and shape of a fully grown man with a tuft of white fur scampering down its leg. Oofles.

The ferret scurried across the room to the girls as Roscoe and Jamie stared incredulously at the scene in front of them. Algieba and Rasalas quickly flung Vannozza and Lupin's bones at the hollering animal, both closing their eyes and remaining still as they were sent into traces. The monster was quick and agile, avoiding Vannozza and striking at the bones each chance it got. The battle was intense, once, Vannozza attempted to slice the scales along its body with a knife which only resulted in a mas of steam issued from its mouth. "YOU DARE ATTACK ME, MORTAL FEMALE!"The voice sounded familiar, but was heavily masked by deep growls. Adhafera was sitting on the ground looking utterly confused.

Suddenly, Jamie felt her legs go free and Oofles jumped up her robes to chew at the ropes binding her wrists. Billie was already rubbing her red ankles. "Billie, do you mind explaining what's going on," Roscoe asked as Billie went to untie him.

"I sent Oofles to go get help," Billie explained. "Didn't know who he was coming back with, but this certainly more than I expected. It looks like Algieba can only control one person at a time for such a heated encounter. Adhafera's back, but I doubt she'll attack. She probably has no idea what's going on."

"Who or what is that thing?!"

Billie cocked her head as she stared at the battle in play. "I'm not sure, but it kind of looks like the rogue version of Leo. Don't you think?"

"Like he's been turned in a dragon or something."

"The Dragon Porridge!"

"No," Roscoe rejected. "It only works by eating mums and we've got none around this time of year."

"Roscoe, the mums are just to dampen the effects, remember? This is Dragon Porridge in its purest form. This must be the porridge I saw him confiscate from Enjore back in April! That stuff doesn't expire and protects from physical combat. As long as he's got that stuff running through his system and Algieba and Rasalas don't try to use spells on him, there's no way Leo can get hurt."

Roscoe rubbed his wrists. "Your ferret got Leo here?"

"And the deputy headmaster." A voice echoed at their side. They rose to see Chase Douglas with several cronies close behind including Professor Irwin, Townsend, Darby, and Wilcox. "Well done, Billie. I'll never complain about the smell of a ferret again. Leo did indeed ingest Dragon Porridge before we were able of make it here. Regretfully, he was consulting with us in the lounge when your familiar came."

"Should we help Leo?" Roscoe asked as Leo's hand swiped the side of Vannozza's cheek, leaving a large gash which steamed uncontrollably as blood trickled down her face and neck. Vannozza, though, didn't seem to notice.

"We can try."

"You need to break the blixes out of their trances." Billie explained. "Rasalas controls the skeleton while Algieba's the master of Vannozza. If you try to do it from here, though—"

"We could hurt Miss. Maggadino or even considering the Porridge doesn't protect against spells," Irwin finished.

"And spreading out might just pin Miss. Maggadino on us," Wilcox warned. "What's our plan of action?"

"Tell Leo to ignore them and go for the blixes?" Billie suggested. "They wouldn't hurt him if he ran, just slow him down a bit."

"You're forgetting the mental factor the potion takes on people, Miss. Philips," Irwin reminded her. "Dragon Porridge comes with a state of narcissism beyond influence. Telling him to break the blixes from their trances could easily be interpreted by his mind as a stab at his pride. Thinking what he does is best, he may choose to completely ignore or suggestion or even come after us. To him, pride is more important than the current predicament."

"I think we'd better take our chances spreading out," Douglas decided. "Children, stay behind here. It's not worth getting lost if we break apart and you have no wands to defend yourselves. Richard?"

The headmaster nodded in an oddly subordinate way despite his position above Douglas. He stayed behind with the children as Irwin and Douglas rushed to the left while Townsend and Wilcox took the right.

"Anapneo!" Professor Wilcox shouted. Instantly, the skeleton was flung out of the way and clattered to the ground.

"Excellent thinking, Rose," Irwin complimented. "Petrificus Totalus!" The skeleton did not seem effected by the spell as she got up.

"Each spell works a different way!" Billie shouted. "Only defensive and offensive spells will work against the skeleton. Anything intended to incapacitate it won't work. Remember, Rasalas is the main controller!"

"Noted," Irwin thanked her.

"Avis Oppugno!" Townsend screamed. In a flash of yellow and blue, a flock of birds illuminated the air around Townsend's wand, darting past the fight, and landing a direct hit on Rasalas. Who, intern, broke from his trance, covering his face with his hands to keep them from pecking his eyes out. The skeleton dropped, motionless.

Rasalas desperately attempted to reverse the spell. "Finite Incant—ARGH! Finite—"

"Conjunctivitus!" Wilcox shouted. Rasalas screeched in pain, covering his eyes. Townsend looked to her colleague notably. "For good measure," she defended.

As Leo dodged an attack from Vannozza who seemed to have endless amounts of energy and spring, Jamie saw steam begin to rise from Leo's shoulders. She shook Billie and pointed. "I see it," she assured her. "Professors! The Dragon Porridge is wearing off!"

"It's lasted quite a while already," Irwin commented. "We need to knock the narcoblix out of her trance as well. Otherwise, Vannozza will surely destroy Leo once he finishes transforming back!"

"SHE WILL NOT DESTROY ME!" Leo boomed. "I AM ALMIGHTY!" He suddenly feigned going left, knocking Vannozza off of her feet when she fell for it, so he was on top her squirming body on the floor. Jamie could barely see the two as steam radiating from Leo's body engulfed the two of them.

"EXPULSO!" Townsend shouted.

In the same moment, Wilcox screamed "CONFRINGO!" and the spells collided in front of Algieba in a shower of blue and red sparks, knocking the woman off her feet and to lay unconscious on the floor.

"What the—LEO?! WHAT IN THE NAME OF MERLIN IS GOING ON!" Vannozza could be heard from under Leo who was still steaming though not quite as boisterously.

"Vannozza," Leo breathed heavily. "Go out with me."

"Leo—" She was interrupted by Leo diving into her lips. At first, she was nothing more than surprised and confused, but closed her eyes to enjoy the relaxing feeling as Leo passionately kissed her on the dungeon floor.

"I don't get it." Roscoe said.

"Of course you don't," Billie conceded.

"HEY!"

"Roscoe, no matter how self-absorbed and wonderful the Dragon Porridge makes you, it can't completely change your personality or desires. You're still the same type of person. Leo and Vannozza were never dating. My guess is that Leo liked Vannozza, but was just too scared to admit it. She did say that Leo was the type to be afraid of rejection. The potion countered those effects. Leo wasn't afraid anymore. The potion gave him the ego boost he needed to man up and kiss Vannozza."

As the two teenagers laid on the floor, enjoying themselves, the teachers apprehended Algieba and Rasalas, walking out of the room, trying to ignore the passionate scene in front of them.

"Where's Adhafera?" Roscoe asked.

Billie searched the room with her eyes. "For the first time today, I don't know."


End file.
